A Night Together

Yu Zechuan might have been skilled at killing, but when it came to matters of the heart, he was far inferior to Lu Yan at controlling people's feelings.

Especially on a damp, rainy night like this, it wasn't just bacteria that bred easily, but desire flowing secretly beneath the surface.

His vision suddenly flipped. Caught completely off guard, Yu Zechuan was pinned beneath Lu Yan instead. Though he could take on several men at once in prison, he couldn't summon a shred of strength now. Like an eagle with broken wings, even struggling was futile.

Yu Zechuan trembled, his eyes reddening. "Get off me!"

The way the other man bristled with thorns was especially interesting, though unfortunately they had all been bought with pain. Yu Zechuan wasn't the first person to apply medicine to Lu Yan's wounds, but he was the first to take a knife for him.

Lu Yan suppressed the countless, indefinable regrets in his heart and said in all seriousness, "Mr. Yu, being this fierce doesn't make you very likable."

Who needs you to like me? Yu Zechuan thought. But before he could say it, a soft, lingering kiss landed beside his ear. The other man's wet tongue slowly traced that vicious, ugly scar, and Yu Zechuan couldn't tell whether it itched or hurt.

"Mm..."

Yu Zechuan frowned and let out a muffled groan. He tried desperately to turn his head away, but in the process accidentally brushed against the bruised corner of Lu Yan's mouth and tasted the bitterness of medicine. Yet that light, entangling sensation soon overwhelmed everything else, leaving him as if he were floating among the clouds, his thoughts and reason swallowed whole.

Taking advantage of the moment, Lu Yan pried open his lips, sucking and kissing, licking, careful to avoid the wound on Yu Zechuan's abdomen. At last, he pulled away reluctantly and asked in a low voice by his ear, "Does it feel good?"

The instant the words left his mouth, the person beneath him went rigid. In a cold voice, Yu Zechuan asked, "Is this how you seduced Jiang Boyun too?"

Lu Yan froze for a moment, then his smile deepened as understanding dawned. "I've never even kissed him."

That was the truth. From the moment he transmigrated, this body had become Lu Yan's own. Whatever relationship the original host had had with Jiang Boyun was none of his business.

Unfortunately, Lu Yan had told so many lies that Yu Zechuan half-believed and half-doubted everything he said. Yet this one, truest sentence of all was the one he refused to believe. His tone was mocking. "You think I'd believe that?"

"Why wouldn't you?" Lu Yan said. "I like you. I don't like him."

That was why people liked lies so much. Lies simply sounded better than the truth. Even though Yu Zechuan thought Lu Yan was lying, the anger in his heart eased a little despite himself.

Yu Zechuan narrowed his eyes. "Lu Yan, save that kind of talk for fooling yourself. Only an idiot would take it seriously."

His reason snapped back into place, along with his strength. He shoved Lu Yan off him in one motion. The sofa was so narrow that Lu Yan landed on the carpet with a thud.

"Tsk..."

Lu Yan was the sort who lay down wherever he fell. Bracing himself on his elbows, he barely propped up his upper body and lazily lifted his eyes. "Mr. Yu, why won't you believe me?"

He didn't believe him! Absolutely didn't! Anyone who believed him was an idiot!

Every alarm in Yu Zechuan's mind blared wildly. Clutching his abdomen, he struggled up from the sofa. After all that tossing around, a fine sheen of cold sweat had already formed on his forehead. He turned and headed for the door, clearly intending to leave.

Seeing this, Lu Yan finally dropped his improper smile. He got up from the floor and grabbed Yu Zechuan. "It's still raining outside. Where are you going?"

Without looking back, Yu Zechuan shook him off. "None of your business!"

Lu Yan yanked him back. "What if I insist on making it my business?"

Their eyes met, and the air fell silent in an instant. Yu Zechuan's gaze was fierce, yielding not an inch. Lu Yan, meanwhile, wore a smile that was not quite a smile, giving him the helpless sensation of punching cotton.

"Don't go."

After a long while, Lu Yan finally let go of Yu Zechuan. He raised both hands and took two small steps back to show he meant no harm. The teasing irreverence was gone from his face, replaced by a serious look. "You take the bed. I'll sleep on the sofa. This place is pretty remote, so you won't be able to get a cab. I'll take you to the hospital tomorrow."

Without waiting for Yu Zechuan's reply, he dragged a chair over to brace the door Yu Zechuan had kicked in, took a blanket from the wardrobe and tossed it onto the sofa, then lay down directly.

With one hand pillowing the back of his head and his long legs casually draped over the armrest, Lu Yan turned his head slightly toward Yu Zechuan. His hair was a mess, and he looked like a lazy fox. "Go to sleep. It's late, and I have work tomorrow."

"Thanks for turning off the light."

Lu Yan truly had no intention of doing anything else. After speaking, he fished an eye mask from the cabinet beside him, put it on, and went straight into sleep mode.

Yu Zechuan stood at the door for several seconds, then looked out at the pitch-black sky. Perhaps it was because the light in the room was so warm that he found himself reluctant to step into that cold, rainy night. At last, he slowly raised his hand.

Click.

The switch made a soft sound, and the room was plunged into darkness.

In the dark, Yu Zechuan lifted the covers and got into bed, taking up only a small corner. He curled up slightly, which eased the pain in his abdomen a little. He slept warily and restlessly, opening his eyes every so often to look toward the sofa. Only after confirming that Lu Yan was still lying there obediently would he close them again.

Even with the eye mask on, Lu Yan could hear the faint rustling from Yu Zechuan's side. With a hook of his finger, he pulled the mask off. His voice was helpless. "Go to sleep already. You don't have work tomorrow, but I do."

The implication was that Yu Zechuan was keeping him awake.

Yu Zechuan immediately seethed with anger, more convinced than ever that Lu Yan's claims of liking him were fake. "Are you blaming me for disturbing your sleep?"

Yes, but he couldn't admit it.

Lu Yan's tone was gentle. "Of course not. I'm just worried you won't sleep well. You only had a fever a couple of days ago, after all. You need proper rest."

"..."

Yu Zechuan choked on his words, and the anger in his heart was extinguished in a strangely abrupt way. Hearing Lu Yan say he had work tomorrow, he seemed to want to say something, but in the end said nothing. After all, there was no relationship between them now.

If one had to get to the bottom of it, they could only be enemies...

At one in the morning, Xue Jin returned home through the rain. He took off his soaking-wet clothes and showered in the bathroom. His shoulder still ached faintly. When he looked in the mirror, he found a dark, bruised footprint on his back.

"Tsk..."

Xue Jin sucked in a breath. "Yu Zechuan really didn't hold back. Good thing he didn't kick me in the face."

He had meant to apply medicine himself, but after trying, he realized he couldn't manage it and could only give up. Drying his hair, he headed for the bedroom.

Just then, the phone on the table rang. The caller ID read "Baby." Xue Jin picked it up, glanced at it, and answered right away. It was hard to imagine that someone with such a refined face could say something so saccharine to his girlfriend. "Baby, what's wrong?"

A sweet, soft female voice came from the other end, sounding a little angry. "Xue Jin, why are you only answering now? Have you been fooling around outside?!"

Xue Jin's expression twitched. Not fooling around, he thought. I'd just been double-teamed by two animals. "I was working on a contract just now and didn't see your messages. Why are you still awake so late?"

The girl reluctantly accepted that explanation. "Because I was waiting for you, obviously. You're so annoying!"

Xue Jin said, "Staying up late isn't good for you. Go to sleep. How about I take you shopping and out for afternoon tea tomorrow? I heard that place has great matcha nama chocolate and strawberry milkshakes."

The girl gave a soft snort. "You don't have time to ask this young lady out anyway. Tomorrow I have to inspect the company with Daddy. I'm busy."

Xue Jin smiled. "Then whenever you have time, I'm at your beck and call. All right?"

Xue Jin had a good temper and patiently coaxed her for quite a while before finally hanging up. He closed his eyes and lay down, feeling exhausted to the bone. He finally managed to fall asleep sometime in the latter half of the night, only to be woken by a message notification.

"Ding!"

Xue Jin barely opened his eyes and groggily felt under his pillow for his phone. It was a message from Yu Zechuan. He had always taken Yu Zechuan's messages seriously, so he opened it, barely using the scraps of wakefulness he had left to read the line. Then he found that Yu Zechuan was asking him to arrange a week's sick leave for Lu Yan at the company.

Oh. Arrange a week's sick leave for Lu Yan.

Xue Jin tossed his phone aside, buried himself in his pillow, and went back to sleep. Three seconds later—

"Whoosh!"

Xue Jin's eyes flew open, and he sprang upright in bed. He opened his phone and read the message again, so furious he could barely get the words out. "What the hell, Yu Zechuan? Are you sick? I'm injured and I still have to go to work tomorrow, so why the hell should I arrange leave for Lu Yan?!"

Xue Jin's hands shook with rage as he tried to call Yu Zechuan, but every call was rejected without exception.

[Sorry, the number you have dialed cannot be reached at the moment. Please try again later...]

Gritting his teeth, Xue Jin sent a text: [Yu Zechuan, don't get so carried away with your act that you lose yourself in it!]

In the darkness, a well-defined hand found the phone and pressed the mute button with unerring accuracy. Its fingertips tapped out a brief reply:

[Sooner or later, he will die.]

Sooner or later, he will die...

It was such a weightless sentence, yet it brought an endless chill to the middle of the night. Even through the screen, that emotion, so flat it was almost dead, nearly swallowed a person whole.

After doing all that, Yu Zechuan turned off the screen. He closed his eyes calmly, the fingers resting on his abdomen tapping slowly, like a venomous snake lying in wait deep in the jungle, solely for the sake of delivering a fatal blow.

Lu Yan had always been a light sleeper. He usually woke automatically around six in the morning. When he woke on the sofa the next day, dawn had only just begun to break. He instinctively looked toward the bed, but there was only a neatly folded quilt and a smoothly straightened sheet. Yu Zechuan was long gone.

Lu Yan sat up in surprise and called tentatively, "Yu Zechuan?"

The surroundings were silent. No one answered.

He must have left.

Lu Yan rubbed his face. He wasn't overly surprised by it. In fact, the fact that Yu Zechuan hadn't killed him in his sleep the day before was already the best outcome he could have hoped for.

Lu Yan got up from the sofa and went into the bathroom to wash up. But as his gaze swept past, he suddenly noticed a sticky note on the mirror, with one line of neat, sharp handwriting:

Xue Jin arranged seven days of leave for you.

There was no signature, no name, just a concise, unmistakable sentence. There was no need to guess who had left it. It had to be Yu Zechuan.

Lu Yan peeled it off and stared at the words for a moment, thinking that this big iceberg did have a human side after all. He had intended to toss the note in the trash, but after a moment's hesitation, he stuck it back in its original place and patted it firmly twice.

There was no reason not to take sick leave when he had it. Besides, going to work would only mean a battle of wits with Skinflint Chen. Lu Yan stayed home and rested for seven days with a clear conscience. No one called to bother him during that time, and he was so comfortable that he nearly forgot he was still on a mission—

Except for Jiang Boyun.

Jiang Boyun was the type who thought whatever he couldn't have was best. Every few days, he sent Lu Yan a message. With Dingyou Group's support, he had finally gotten the board shareholders to agree to the island tourism project, pouring most of the company's liquid capital into it. Even the news media were reporting on it.

Lu Yan always felt there was more to the matter, but he couldn't put his finger on what was wrong.

The day after his sick leave ended, Lu Yan returned to work. The moment he walked into the office, he found his colleagues looking at him in a particularly strange way. Even Skinflint Chen merely sat at his desk drinking strong tea, glared at him once, and said nothing.

He hadn't picked a fight?

Lu Yan raised an eyebrow, surprised. He pulled out his chair and sat at his workstation, then reached over and nudged Jiang Kangkang at the next desk. "Is it just me, or is everyone looking at me really strangely?"

Jiang Kangkang took a bite of bread and spoke quietly. "Haven't you noticed that I'm looking at you strangely too?"

Lu Yan: "...Why?"

Jiang Kangkang swallowed his mouthful with difficulty and lowered his voice. "Man, you're famous now. You didn't come to work last week, and Skinflint Chen was originally going to find an excuse to fire you. But Mr. Xue personally went to HR to handle your sick leave paperwork, and he even raised your salary by twenty percent!"

When it came to the salary, Jiang Kangkang couldn't help sounding even more excited. He asked in amazement, "The whole company knows you've latched onto Mr. Xue now. How did you pull that off?!"

Xue Jin was the company's famously eligible bachelor: polished, accomplished, young, and promising. Every positive adjective could be applied to him, and his every move drew the attention of all the young female employees in the company. The week before, he had suddenly gone out of his way to arrange sick leave for an obscure junior employee. It was nothing short of shocking.

If Lu Yan hadn't been a man, rumors would probably be flying by now.

Lu Yan felt as if his head were full of mush. But before he could process the news, a knock sounded outside. Eva, the chairman's secretary, stood in the doorway, her gaze searching the office with confusion.

"Excuse me, which one of you is Lu Yan? Chairman Jiang wants to see him. He's waiting in his office."

Her voice was neither loud nor soft, but it instantly stirred up a commotion. In the blink of an eye, countless gazes converged on Lu Yan, as though they wanted to bore holes through him.

Lu Yan: "..."