KC | Chapter 76

Lin Yiran’s way of thinking had always been rational, and he never believed feelings could be slept into existence. He kept warning himself: Chen Xi was unable to take it anymore, I need to stop first, there is still plenty of time ahead; but what he actually did was, keep taking, not stopping for even a moment.

But when reason could not beat emotion, and the body kept clamoring for desire, he had to confirm that he liked Chen Xi even more than he had imagined.

It really matched the nonsense he had casually made up last week, “You are too good-looking, I couldn’t help myself,” or more precisely, he could not control his feelings.

He had never been this out of control before, urgently, madly, and forcefully destroying Chen Xi again and again, unable to stop taking, unable to stop squeezing, wishing he could merge into one body.

“Sorry, Chen Xi.” Lin Yiran kept apologizing while continuing.

Because he liked him, so he had to apologize to him.

You were a pure white flower growing in a swamp, and I was a vicious dog walking through the mire. I coveted your beauty, stepped into the mud, and wanted to drag you down into the swamp with me. You were too beautiful to me, and my liking was too dirty, only wanting to destroy. The more you struggled, the deeper I fell, and now I had completely lost control of my emotions.

I wanted to receive your forgiveness, but I feared even more the distance that would come after you learned the truth. I would treat you well and make up for what I owed before.

Thank you for still being willing to like me, I would guard your purity, and from now on I would not let anyone have the chance to hurt you.

Lin Yiran carried Chen Xi back to the bed, and all the way there, drip, drip, drip…

Kisses fell like rain. Compared with the light kisses before, they were a little fiercer, and the hot breath set the body on fire.

Night fell, and the body soaked in the mixed bath of alcohol and body wash was burning hot. Chen Xi seemed to have fallen asleep, then been woken up again. His brain could not turn properly. After the excitement reached the peak several times, his slender arms rested on the edge of the bed, swaying weakly.

Slender limbs, a narrow waistline, a face covered in tear tracks. The little slacker who did not exercise much, after being squeezed by several hours of madness in a row, had a bit of oxygen deprivation in his head.

“Brother Lin, I think I have a fever again.” Chen Xi was like a dying fish knocked onto the shore, mouth open as he gasped hard for air, his body unable to stop twitching, tears uncontrollably pattering down.

When the stacked pleasure was about to break through the body’s limit, what came to mind was no longer love and sex, but living. The instinct to survive was human nature. Chen Xi only wanted to live now.

He wanted Lin Yiran to stop, but shouting was useless, so he could only lie.

Lin Yiran patted his head, got out of bed and poured a glass of ice water, then fed it to Chen Xi.

“Brother Lin, I’m so sleepy, can we sleep?” Seeing that acting pitiful worked, Chen Xi immediately took the chance and climbed up the pole.

Lin Yiran did not say anything. With his back to him, he continued again…

The back of his body, trained over many years, had tight lines, and the muscles on his shoulder blades rose and fell like mountain ranges. When he wore clothes, his shoulders did not seem this wide. To confirm exactly how wide his shoulders were, or maybe simply because he wanted to touch them, Chen Xi, who was a face lover, took the initiative to wrap his arms around his waist.

The tight abs were the result of years of training. The beautiful body was like an ancient Greek statue, a masterpiece carefully carved by an artist. Chen Xi really liked his waist.

“Baby, although your crying is making my heart melt, I really can’t stop.”

“Darling, no sleeping, look at me, I promise this is the last time.”

…

In order to achieve his goal, Lin Yiran said all the sweet words he could. Chen Xi very much wanted to cooperate, but his body really could not take it.

He took good care of him, and although he took frequently, it did not feel painful.

If their beginning was a misplaced accident, then now it was an exact and flawless connection. There were too many coincidences, too many mismatched frequencies, too many words that did not match the heart between them, and what they were immensely fortunate about was that that accidental beginning hit the lovestruck person’s bullseye, letting the feelings buried underground see the light.

The moment Chen Xi saw Lin Yiran in the crowd, the moment Lin Yiran snatched Chen Xi’s order, their intertwined fate had already written the result in the future.

Lin Yiran was Chen Xi’s long-suppressed unattainable wish, the pain he held at the tip of his heart but also had to hide desperately, his white moonlight stained with ink, his helplessness after repeated hesitation and final certainty.

Chen Xi had fantasized countless times about the dream of being with Lin Yiran. When his thoughts were no longer bound by morality, he gathered his courage to fight for happiness. It was not easy to bend a straight man, much less when Lin Yiran was also his boss, but Chen Xi had never backed down. In more than 20 years of living, he had only met one person he liked. Since his secret crush had come into the light, he absolutely had to fight for it.

Before he went after him, he had already made the worst plans: if it did not work once, then he would chase him ten times, if talking about feelings did not work, then he would sleep with him first. He had not expected Lin Yiran to be the one to confess first, everything seemed to come too easily.

Ever since he called Lin Yiran greasy, there had not been any more sweet talk, and that was really… a little regrettable. Lin Yiran did not have sweet talk, and he could not say anything mushy either. The two of them, being out of sync, would start arguing after just a couple of sentences. It was due to professional habit, in a negotiation neither side wanted to give in, and after arguing for a while, they would suddenly start kissing.

Chen Xi felt that the way they got along was not quite normal, but he could not quite tell where the problem was.

He wanted to be with Lin Yiran, to always be with him.

At this moment, the mentally ill patient with no sense of security was willing to hand over his whole being, both trust and dependence.

The morning light filtered through the curtains and outlined a faint halo on Chen Xi’s face. He did not sleep until noon on his day off like usual, and for once he got up in the morning. It was not because he was not tired enough, only because he was hungry. He had worked from sunset until the early morning, done several hours of hard labor, had not eaten dinner, and had been woken up by hunger.

He was a little floaty, and a little dizzy, maybe swollen too, but fortunately it did not hurt.

His legs were a little weak but he could still walk. Unlike last time, when he had been purely too painful to dare walk. His waist was done for. The tendons inside seemed to have shifted out of place, and if he stretched it even a little while walking, it hurt. Chen Xi rummaged in the fridge for a bottle of milk and flopped on the sofa to drink it.

The ice-cold milk poured straight into his stomach. Chen Xi’s belly felt a little uncomfortable, and he wanted to go to the bathroom, but he was also a little lazy. He rolled over on the sofa and touched his sore and swollen waist. His tendons and bones had not shifted out of place, it was just a little swollen, like the kind of swelling from forcing an egg into a snake’s belly.

His stomach gurgled and rumbled, and Chen Xi had no choice but to drift slowly into the bathroom.

…there was no warning before pooping, but he still pooped it out.

The pipe unclogging had been done well, the reservoir could not retain even a bit of water, and it all whooshed out.

Chen Xi could not help worrying about his future physical condition. If they kept doing this, in a few years he would probably end up hospitalized with an anal fistula, getting slapped in the face every day by a caregiver.

Indulgence harmed the body, and beauty ruined people.

If he wanted sustainable “sex” development, only opening new sources and reducing consumption could sustain continuous development.

Chen Xi sat at home on the toilet and reflected on life philosophy, while Lin Yiran ran 3 kilometers in the neighborhood.

Morning runs refreshed the mind. Lin Yiran liked aerobic exercise that trained the will, such as running and mountain climbing. Anaerobic exercise was just a way to keep muscles from wasting away, and could not really count as a hobby.

A large supermarket was near the neighborhood, two streets away. After finishing his run, Lin Yiran bought some fresh food, hummed a little tune on the way home, and had a satisfied, refreshed look on his face.

When he pushed the door open and entered, he saw Chen Xi lying spread out on the sofa and laughed. “Good morning.”

“Please do not say the same things at home that you say in the company. It gives me the pressure of a leader watching me work.” Chen Xi continued to sprawl there, propped his head up a bit, and glanced at Lin Yiran sideways.

Lin Yiran grabbed his arm and pulled him into his embrace to rub him hard.

“What kind of look is that? Dissatisfied with your leader, wanting to fix the workplace as a 95-born?”

“Tsk tsk, if you want to fix the leader, you have to act like a green tea bitch. Look at how you cannot hold it in. You will never achieve anything big.”

“Oh, you even scratch people. So fierce. You were not like this last night. Why do you stop recognizing people as soon as you get out of bed?”

The little slacker could not outtalk him, could not beat him physically, and did not want to admit defeat, so he tilted his neck and said unhappily, “You are so annoying.”

“Baby, your eyes on me look like you want to eat me up.” His low voice was lingering and drawn out.

The hormones temporarily numbed his brain, and Chen Xi provoked him, saying, “I just want to eat you.”

“Haha!” Lin Yiran lifted his face in both hands, and in the sun-filled open living room, they exchanged each other’s breath.

They shared a kiss that tasted of mint toothpaste.

Chen Xi gave all his respect and admiration to Lin Yiran. Teacher and friend, lover and superior. No matter when it was, Lin Yiran could easily stir up all his emotions.

“Brother Lin, I like you.”

This was probably the umpteenth time Chen Xi had said “like.” He was not as eloquent as Lin Yiran, he could only clumsily express his love.

“Brother Lin, really, thank you.”

“You taught me sales pitch tactics, client visit techniques, negotiation strategies. Whenever I ran into trouble, you helped me. All of that has to be thanked.”

Starting from that bowl of noodles three years ago, Chen Xi had never stopped saying thank you.

Lin Yiran did not say “like” as many times as Chen Xi did, so he chose to selectively answer his words.

“I have done sales for 13 years, signed many key clients, and never had a single order that just fell into place naturally. Every deal was the result of going all out to battle the client side, fighting competitors to the death, using every means possible to achieve the goal, persisting for this long just to enjoy the joy of closing a deal. I never expected someone to enter the industry because of me.”

You say thank you to me, but I am the one who should be thanking you. Thank you for letting me see the light on the road of sales, the light of dawn lighting the road ahead, so that muddy and mottled paths are no longer to be feared.

“I have 3 important cases next week, and I still need to go with friends to bid on 2 projects, make a proposal for 1 new client, and push payment from 4 old clients, so I have to come back very late at night, and maybe I might not come back… If I do not come back, it is because the place for dinner is too far, not convenient for calling a designated driver, so I will just sleep in the car and save myself the trouble of running back and forth.”

Lin Yiran told Chen Xi his schedule as if he were reporting work.

Chen Xi held his hand and softly said, “I did not doubt you, do not overthink it.”

The early autumn sunlight shimmered and swayed, the breeze outside the window was gentle, a lover kept him company, time was peaceful and still, the drifting years were no longer lonely, and the distant future had become something to look forward to.

Chen Xi bit at Lin Yiran’s lips, his eyes carrying endless affection and a few threads of sickly dark light. Lin Yiran rubbed his face carefully with his fingertips, feeling his heartbeat, and slowly tightened his arms.

Another round of the red waves turning over.

Chen Xi was like an ancient bell hollowed out in the middle, soaked in the bathtub. He had thought it was over, but he had not expected the one striking the bell to raise the stick again and bang, bang, bang at it. The poor bell was about to be beaten to pieces.

In a daze, he seemed to hear the bell of Zaojun City again, and remembered the solemn kiss under the old city walls, the touch in the conference room, the embrace inside the Cadillac, the tightly held hands on the kayak, and that serene and beautiful moonlit night.

The feeling rooted deep underground burst through the soil like bamboo shoots after rain, rising from the ground and growing wildly. The dense bamboo grove carried deep, heavy bell tolls

,念念不忘必有回响.

Author’s note:

Reported, revised by 1000 words