Sheng Renxing didn’t speak anymore. He lay in Xing Ye’s arms, the clothes between the two were soft, warmed by body heat, just like the blankets on a winter morning. He didn’t want to get up.
After a while, his emotions calmed down a bit. He slightly raised his face, no longer buried in the other’s collar. Just now, his sensitive eyes were forcibly rubbed against Xing Ye’s neck, but the temperature of Xing Ye’s neck was even higher than his own. Sheng Renxing rubbed against it, and immediately felt a slight vibration in the other’s throat.
“Is it uncomfortable?” The current posture of the two was half-sided, neither of them was comfortable. Sheng Renxing asked this question, but his body didn’t move at all.
“It’s okay.” Xing Ye adjusted his posture and replied truthfully.
“Oh,” Sheng Renxing sniffed, “Hold it in, then.”
Xing Ye chuckled lightly, the vibration of his throat brushing against his eyelashes, feeling a bit ticklish.
Sheng Renxing asked, “Why won’t you fight with me?”
Xing Ye was silent for a moment, “Do you want to fight?”
Sheng Renxing stopped talking and forcefully bit his clothes, teeth rubbing against the fabric, and made a low hum.
He was still holding the anger from talking to Sheng Yan just now, so he vented it by holding Xing Ye’s clothes.
“Can’t you comfort me?” Seeing Xing Ye still silent and unmoving, he couldn’t help but pick at him again.
“How should I comfort you?” Xing Ye asked.
Sheng Renxing: “You’re asking me?”
Xing Ye said, “I’ve never comforted anyone before, afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
“Then learn!” Sheng Renxing hummed again, “Can I still complain about you?”
Xing Ye was silent for a moment, “Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying!” Sheng Renxing was stabbed in the lung by his comfort. He was about to get up from him, believing that Xing Ye had never comforted anyone, otherwise, how could he say such irritating words!
He saw Xing Ye looking down at him. They were very close, and he could see his own reflection in Xing Ye’s eyes—a pitiful sight.
Not only his eyes and nose were red, but his whole face was red from being buried in Xing Ye’s neck for so long.
It feels like it’s burning up.
Not cool at all!
He was stunned himself, completely unaware of how he looked—after all, the last time he cried like this was years ago.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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He then lowered his head slightly, his breath brushing against Sheng Renxing’s eyelashes.
Sheng Renxing subconsciously closed his eyes and stopped moving. There was a gentle pressure on his eyes, not a very soft touch, and he felt a slight brush against them.
Xing Ye kissed his eyes.
He couldn’t help but hold his breath, but his eyelashes couldn’t help but tremble lightly. Feeling Xing Ye’s breath on the left, all his nerves focused on his own eyes.
He aimlessly thought in his mind, this was indeed true, he was really comforted with his mouth.
Suddenly, Sheng Renxing felt a bit of warmth and moisture sweep over his eyes.
Then Xing Ye backed away a bit, and when he opened his eyes, he seemed to see Xing Ye’s lips slightly redder than usual, as if it were an illusion.
Xing Ye pursed his lips and frowned, “It’s salty.”
Sheng Renxing choked, pushed away from his embrace, and glanced at the piano keys in front of him, “You still find fault with this?”
With this disturbance, he managed to get out of his self-pity and lightly tapped a few notes on the piano keys.
“Let me tell you about my dad,” Xing Ye turned and tentatively tapped a few keys, speaking calmly.
Sheng Renxing paused, his gaze falling on Xing Ye’s fingers on the keys. Xing Ye’s fingers were long and slender, with prominent knuckles. When he applied a little force, the veins on the back of his hand would appear.
Very handsome.
But upon closer inspection, his hands were covered in many scars, large and small. He couldn’t even count them all at a glance. These were not the hands that a high school student should have.
Sheng Renxing fell silent.
“I don’t have many memories of him,” Xing Ye said, looking down as if recalling. “I can hardly remember what he looks like.”
“But in the neighbors’ mouths, he was an ‘honest man.'”
“An honest man?” Sheng Renxing asked, thinking about the gambling debts his father left behind. Where did this “honest man” reputation come from?
“Yeah,” Xing Ye said, “He didn’t grow up in the street. He seemed to be a carpenter, an honest man who came to pick up my mom.”
Sheng Renxing interjected shortly, “Ah, then what happened later, did he get involved in gambling?”
Upon hearing Xing Ye’s words, he couldn’t help but wonder, could there be some hidden truth behind this? Like someone setting him up to get addicted to gambling? Or maybe the family urgently needed money and wanted to gamble?
“I don’t know,” Xing Ye said, tilting his head slightly in a shaking motion. “Maybe out of boredom, for fun, or just going with the flow.” He speculated simply, as if discussing a stranger.
“Go with the flow?” Sheng Renxing looked at him but didn’t ask, just focused on listening to him.
Xing Ye, however, turned to look at him, his mouth curled up, as if smiling, but there was no smile in his eyes. “In Yanjiang Street, someone who stays away from the Five Poisons and is an ‘honest man’ is considered a strange one.”
“Maybe he regretted it, thinking he was someone else’s good husband, but in the end, he just took on a destined losing bet and lost himself in it.”
Sheng Renxing was a bit stunned by his words. He unconsciously straightened his back, and the previously warm body temperature had cooled down in these few sentences. He opened and closed his mouth several times before asking, “Does your mother gamble too?”
“Before, yeah,” Xing Ye nodded calmly. “But she stopped after giving birth to me.”
“When a man can’t be relied upon, they rely on their son. It’s wishful thinking to expect a phoenix egg to be laid in a rat’s nest and to fly her out.”
He talked about these things with a calm face, which was frightening. He even looked at Sheng Renxing’s expression, rationally considering if he had said too much, and then toned it down a bit. “It was like this in the first few years. Later, I realized what kind of person my son was and stopped daydreaming.”
Sheng Renxing frowned, “What kind of person are you?”
Xing Ye was taken aback and changed his tone, “She realized I couldn’t meet her expectations, so she stopped caring about me.”
Sheng Renxing’s expression didn’t improve.
Xing Ye continued, “In recent years, I’ve figured it out and felt like I’ve been taken advantage of. I actually wasted so much time on me, always wanting to get something back.” He nodded slightly as if agreeing with himself, looking at Sheng Renxing. “So if she comes looking for you again, don’t pay any attention to her, and don’t feel sorry for her.”
Sheng Renxing thought about the last time he saw Xing Ye’s mother and felt that she wasn’t as indifferent as he described. He vaguely nodded to indicate that he understood, then changed the subject, “Why doesn’t your mother go out and find a job?”
If she disliked the current situation, why didn’t she change it herself instead of relying on her husband and son?
“Hmm?” Xing Ye didn’t dwell on the previous question. After thinking for a moment, he said, “What do you think she could find? A hair-washer, a waitress?”
“She’d be busy listening to orders and earn just one or two thousand a month, and she’d spend it all in a few days. She wouldn’t do it.”
His words coincided strangely with what Wei Huan had said before.
“A few fights could earn as much as I do in a month. Would you do it if you were me?”
Sheng Renxing felt like something was pressing on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He felt a strange sense of dissatisfaction. He wanted to ask Xing Ye, what about you? Would you do it?
But the words didn’t come out, and he knew the answer in his heart. Xing Ye didn’t spend day and night looking for fights, risking danger in boxing matches, just out of interest.
But he couldn’t help but wonder, what if Xing Ye’s debts were paid off? Would he still do it?
In the end, he didn’t ask. He felt that those were still too far off.
Sheng Renxing thought, ‘I’ll ask when that day comes.’
He reached out and tapped a few keys on the piano. “What about your dad? Did he ever contact you later?”
Xing Ye thought for a moment and shook his head. “He didn’t dare. He was afraid I’d kill him.”
There was a long silence before Sheng Renxing spoke, sounding almost like a complaint. “You’re comforting me, but it’s making me feel even more frustrated.”
Xing Ye, with a deadpan expression, attempted a dark joke. “At least your dad didn’t ask you to help him repay his debts, right?”
After a while, the two looked at each other and laughed.
Sheng Renxing cursed softly, “Fvck.”
“I’m actually not that angry.” Seeing Xing Ye looking skeptical, he furrowed his brow and explained, “I’m just a little regretful.”
“Regretting ruining your dad’s wedding?” Xing Ye asked.
Sheng Renxing rolled his eyes at him. “Regretting being so impulsive and giving Sheng Yan leverage.”
He couldn’t help but think, if the roles were reversed, Sheng Yan would surely handle things smoothly.
Xing Ye chuckled.
Sheng Renxing: “Do you think he’s punishing me because I disrupted his wedding?”
Xing Ye: “?”
Sheng Renxing: “He wouldn’t have ‘anger,’ that’s an ‘extra’ thing. This punishment is for my mishandling of things, to show me where I went wrong, and to teach me a lesson.”
“I exposed my weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and he used them to retaliate. It’s my own fault, I can’t blame anyone else.”
He looked at Xing Ye and said, “So you’re comforting me because you’re saying that if I’m more careful next time, I’ll definitely beat him easily!”
Xing Ye paused for three seconds, but instead of comforting him as he said, he replied, “But if you didn’t have this personality, you wouldn’t have met me.”
Sheng Renxing was stunned. “Do you think I shouldn’t change?”
Xing Ye remained silent again, just shaking his head.
My heart…