The Scorching Sun - 71
The rain-soaked Yan Lie was clearly far more deserving of sympathy than the thoroughly bullied little baldy.
Seeing that he'd brought absolutely nothing with him, Fang Zhuo went to the wardrobe and found a towel, then dug out two clean pieces of clothing that Ye Yuncheng had worn before and left them together outside the bathroom. She boiled a kettle of water as well, intending to use it to make some cold medicine.
This man really was impossible.
Fang Zhuo picked up her phone to check the weather forecast. The temperature had plummeted after nightfall and was now barely above ten degrees. The damp air carried by the cold wind cut straight through the skin. And Yan Lie was wearing only one layer.
Fang Zhuo found the medicine kit in Ye Yuncheng's bedroom and took some cold medicine back to her room. By then, Yan Lie had finished his shower too.
After a hot shower, Yan Lie had become outrageously confident again, completely shedding the pitiful, shivering figure he'd been only moments earlier.
He came striding through the doorway in his slippers.
He wasn't wearing a shirt, only a pair of loose, short pajama bottoms. He was dressed for practically nothing but cool air.
Fang Zhuo froze for a moment, her gaze falling over his exposed skin. From the line of his shoulders down to his waist and abdomen, every smooth, well-defined line of muscle was laid bare, carrying the same vaguely mischievous intent as its owner.
Fang Zhuo held the medicine box in her hand. "Where are your clothes?"
Yan Lie didn't even blink. "I told you, I don't like wearing pajamas."
"Aren't you cold?" Fang Zhuo said sternly. "Go put some clothes on. If you catch a cold, I'm not taking care of you."
"Don't you know men naturally have a higher body temperature than women?" Yan Lie said, rubbing his hair roughly with the towel. Every now and then, he stole a sideways glance at her. His words didn't sound particularly convincing, but he said them loudly enough to cover his guilty conscience.
Yan Lie said, "You'd know if you gave me a hug."
Fang Zhuo bent over to mix the medicine. After hesitating for a moment, she still said it when she handed him the cup. "Yan Lie, I can say with certainty that this isn't just my imagination. Your mind is a little impure."
A question mark seemed to appear over Yan Lie's head. His eyes darted away, but he refused to back down. "What? I never said I wanted to have a purely... spiritual relationship." His voice, however, had dropped considerably.
He drank the medicine, but still felt a little cold. Once the heat had faded, he obediently went back to find something to wear.
It was a loose white short-sleeved shirt, its collar hanging slack around his neck. It didn't look particularly effective against the cold.
Back in the room, there wasn't a second chair, so Yan Lie simply lay down on the freshly made bed.
He tilted his head up to look at the person beside the desk. Fang Zhuo had her head bowed over her book, her expression perfectly calm, as though she hadn't noticed him at all. The longer he looked, the more ridiculous the whole thing seemed.
He'd come all the way here and put himself on blatant display, yet Fang Zhuo only told him to put on another layer.
Yan Lie laughed for a while, but gradually, the amusement began to sour.
His skin was starting to feel the cold, even the towel beneath his damp hair had grown chilly.
Fang Zhuo really wasn't going to take care of him.
Yan Lie lasted less than two minutes before he called out loudly, "Fang Zhuo!"
Fang Zhuo held down the page with one finger and turned it over. "What?"
Yan Lie complained, "How can you be like this?!"
Her voice remained utterly unruffled. "Like what?"
Yan Lie hesitated. In the end, he softened his approach and asked, "Am I not handsome?"
"Extremely handsome."
Yan Lie asked again, "Is my body not good?"
"Extremely good."
Yan Lie said, "Are you just humoring me?"
Fang Zhuo's reasoning was clear and her answers steady. She didn't hesitate for even a second. "I'm not."
"You're lying." Yan Lie sat up and beckoned to her. "Come here."
Fang Zhuo turned her head and gave him a cool glance before getting up and walking out.
Yan Lie was so frustrated his chest felt tight. He scrambled to his feet and followed her.
Halfway there, he saw Fang Zhuo coming back with a hair dryer in her hand.
All the fight went out of Yan Lie at once. As she approached, he took a few small steps backward, returning to the room with her. In a soft voice, he said, "I thought you'd run away."
Fang Zhuo gave him another meaningful look and casually closed the bedroom door behind them.
The old house didn't have many outlets. Aside from the ones beside the desk and television, there was only one more outlet by the bed.
Yan Lie sat on the edge of the bed. Once Fang Zhuo had plugged in the dryer, he draped the towel around his neck and waited for her to come over.
Figured he clearly wasn't going to manage taking care of himself tonight, Fang Zhuo pressed the switch and gently ran her fingers through his hair as she dried it.
Yan Lie reached up, caught her around the waist, and pulled her forward. Fang Zhuo steadied herself without moving.
Yan Lie tugged harder, stubbornly determined to bring her closer.
Fang Zhuo couldn't do anything about him. He kept pulling until she ended up sitting on his lap, whereupon he wrapped his arms tightly around her.
It wasn't a convenient position at all. But thinking of what he'd been through that night, Fang Zhuo tolerated his childish insistence for the moment.
Yan Lie's short hair was easy to dry. In less than five minutes, it was completely done.
The noise stopped, and the world abruptly fell silent. Outside the window, rain tapped steadily against the eaves, its soft, repetitive sound somehow making the quiet feel even more tense.
Fang Zhuo straightened the dryer's cord and set it aside. She tried to get up, but found herself held firmly in place by Yan Lie.
His ears and neck were slightly red, the warmth of the dryer still lingered in his hair.
Just as he'd claimed, his skin was hot to the touch, his whole body flushed with heat as though he might start smoking. Even his breathing had grown faintly heavier.
Fang Zhuo gave his shoulder a gentle push and was met with another completely unreasonable complaint.
"I told you not to push me."
"Your hair is dry," Fang Zhuo said. "It's late. Go make your own bed. Are you sleeping in Uncle's room tonight?"
Yan Lie lifted his head and muttered, "I don't want to."
"Then what do you want to do?" Fang Zhuo asked. "Sleep on the floor?"
Yan Lie's answer came slowly. By the time Fang Zhuo understood what he meant, he'd already pulled her down onto the bed with him.
He braced himself on one arm, his face turned away from the light, his gaze deep and intent as he looked at her. His other hand traced slowly down the side of her face before coming to rest against her lips. The gesture was intimate and gentle, tentative with both caution and curiosity.
Fang Zhuo thought that sometimes human impulses really did unfold with astonishing inevitability.
She could smell the same shower gel on Yan Lie that she had on herself. With every lingering kiss, his body heat grew increasingly difficult to control. Even the heart beating inside her chest seemed to fall into the same disordered rhythm as the rain outside.
There were moments when a person simply stopped being able to think. Even the fastest-running system was still at the mercy of its power button.
Lightning suddenly flashed outside, cleaving through the pitch-black curtain of rain.
Yan Lie let out a long breath and stopped. He only held her tightly as he murmured, "No. I didn't bring anything with me."
Fang Zhuo's eyelids trembled. The entire night felt profoundly abnormal. Even after her blood had gradually returned to a normal pace, her hands and feet still felt weak and unsteady.
Their proximity left her at a loss. Situations like this weren't something she knew how to handle. She reached out and pushed him again. This time, Yan Lie obediently released her, vaulted past her, and left the room without looking back.
The sound of the other person's breathing disappeared, and the room suddenly felt strangely empty.
Fang Zhuo assumed Yan Lie had left. She sat there in a daze for a while, then straightened the quilt in the corner and put the hair dryer away in the cabinet.
With nothing better to do, she stood in the empty space for several minutes before taking her exercise book from beside the desk, hoping studying might help her calm down.
The various mathematical symbols refused to form any coherent meaning in her fuzzy mind. Fang Zhuo persevered for two minutes, but she couldn't even properly digest a simple formula. In the end, she gave up and took out her phone again.
The invention of electronic devices had made an enormous contribution to humanity's ability to distract itself.
Fang Zhuo scrolled through her Moments and finally found a few pieces of information that were both practical and utterly useless.
Yu Qingjiang and her two other roommates had gone to the mall for a hotpot. It was an authentic Sichuan-style hotpot, the kind of authentic that none of them could handle. What a waste of the spicy broth, since Fang Zhuo wasn't there.
The packages she'd ordered had finally arrived.
Professor Tian's assignment was due tomorrow night.
Ye Yuncheng had posted his first short video combining food with educational content, and somehow the mysterious algorithm had recommended it to people.
It seemed as though everyone was having a wonderful time.
Fang Zhuo wasn't unhappy, exactly. She just couldn't quite make sense of the vague feeling of confusion inside her.
She had just finished two rounds of a puzzle game when Yan Lie returned.
The young man's hair, which had been completely dry earlier, was damp again. Without saying a word, he walked into the room and was just about to claim her bed.
Fang Zhuo looked at him strangely. "Why did you come back?"
Yan Lie froze where he stood, desperately searching for an excuse. Seeing that Fang Zhuo didn't look particularly angry, he rolled his eyes thoughtfully before saying in a mysterious tone, "Listen."
"I don't want to."
Yan Lie laughed. With shameless determination, he said, "No, I'm scared. You have no idea how hard it was getting here tonight. I stepped into more than eighty-one potholes. There were no lights along the road, and I almost got lost. All those shadows have left me psychologically scarred. Your windows keep making those noises too. If I sleep by myself, I'll have nightmares."
Without giving Fang Zhuo any chance to refuse, he hopped onto the bed and pulled the quilt up over her.
"I'm not going to do anything. I just want to hold you." Yan Lie said, "Are you cold? Your quilt looks pretty thin."
He continued enthusiastically, "Time for bed. It's already really late. We have to get up early tomorrow to catch the bus. Have you finished your assignment?"
Fang Zhuo: "..."
"Would you share your pillow with me?" Yan Lie put on an expression of perfect obedience. "Of course, if you don't want to, I can just lie here and sleep."
Fang Zhuo couldn't resist the temptation. Almost as though possessed, she put down her phone and went over to turn off the light.
She felt her way back to the bed in the darkness. Yan Lie immediately took her hand and happily whispered in her ear, "Good night."
The next morning, the rain had stopped. The air carried a faint trace of moisture. Fang Zhuo woke in a daze, feeling the dry warmth of the bedding around her instead of its usual dampness. Her gaze wandered across the ceiling before shifting to the side, and her rational mind seemed to waver somewhere between returning to her senses and abandoning them all over again.
Yan Lie looked even more harmless in sleep than he did when awake. His hair was a complete mess, yet it did nothing to diminish his clean-cut features. The only truly bizarre thing was that he shouldn't have been there at all.
Fang Zhuo felt a pang of regret. She couldn't understand what she'd been doing the night before. When she tried to get up, her hair caught beneath Yan Lie's shoulder and tugged painfully.
Yan Lie woke as well. Still bleary-eyed, he lifted a hand, carefully freed her hair, then ruffled it gently. His voice was hoarse when he asked, "Does it hurt?"
Fang Zhuo stared straight at him. Yan Lie noticed and opened his eyes, asking with perfect naturalness, "What's wrong?"
There was simply no way to argue with this person.
He was far too good at this.
Fang Zhuo went over to the desk. Rain had seeped through the windowpanes the night before and had left most of the desktop wet. Fortunately, she'd moved her assignments farther inside, so nothing had been damaged.
She went to the bathroom, found a rag, and wiped the traces of water from the desk. Throughout the entire process, Yan Lie sat cross-legged on the bed, resting his chin in his hand and watching her work without saying a word, as motionless as a piece of wood.
Yan Lie's silence made Fang Zhuo a little uneasy.
He was definitely cooking up another outrageous idea.
---
Comments
Post a Comment