TA •Chapter 90

Cheng Ke had always thought he was not the kind of person who would bottle things up, but so many things were impossible to predict. It was only after he tackled Jiang Yuduo onto the bed in broad daylight that he finally confirmed he really had been bottling it up, and bottling it up pretty badly at that.

Maybe it was the anxiety of being apart for these past few months. Maybe it was the fact that from the very first day he had had “ideas” about Jiang Yuduo, he had been thinking about it one way or another ever since…

In short, the instant their skin pressed together and the heat sealed in between them, Cheng Ke humbly admitted that he really had been holding back.

It felt like clutching a basin of fire. The fire burned straight into his body, scorching every nerve until it was hot enough to burn, and everywhere it reached was pure intoxication.

Jiang Yuduo had probably resisted, but compared with how stunned he had been, that resistance was probably eight thousand levels lower, to the point that Cheng Ke could barely remember it. What did keep circling in his mind, though, was that one reluctant, gasping “ah” he had dragged out.

The uneven breathing that came after paled in comparison to that brief sound.

Mao only slowly wandered into the bedroom after the fighting had settled, like an observant and responsible hygiene inspector.

He circled the bed twice first, then jumped up and sniffed carefully at the two people who were still half tangled together.

Cheng Ke pushed Mao away, rolled off Jiang Yuduo, and lay there feeling like only now had he finally gotten his breathing back under control. He turned his head to look at Jiang Yuduo, who was still lying face-down on the pillow. “You…”

“Don’t talk.” Jiang Yuduo cut him off quickly.

Cheng Ke blinked, wanting to ask why, but after a moment’s hesitation he still said nothing. He just reached out and put a hand on Jiang Yuduo’s back.

Jiang Yuduo immediately reached back and took his hand away.

Cheng Ke froze again. A sudden unease rose in him. He grabbed Mao, who had climbed onto Jiang Yuduo’s stomach, set the cat aside, and sat up. The kid was mad?

That couldn’t be, right?

Was his stomach really that small?

But he couldn’t have hurt him too badly… wasn’t Jiang Yuduo still making noises?

“Third Brother,” Cheng Ke said carefully, supporting himself on one hand as he leaned toward him. To show sincerity, he even used the respectful address. “Third Brother, you…”

Jiang Yuduo sighed, turned his head to look at him, then once again reached back and grabbed his wrist, tugging him downward.

Cheng Ke ended up sprawled on top of him.

“Don’t talk,” Jiang Yuduo said into the pillow. “Let me recover.”

“Oh.” Cheng Ke finally reacted. For Jiang Yuduo, that battle had probably been a little too intense, and maybe there was also a bit of embarrassment?

He didn’t make another sound. He simply turned on his side and held Jiang Yuduo.

It was about twenty minutes later, just as Cheng Ke felt like he was about to fall asleep, that Jiang Yuduo finally moved.

Cheng Ke quickly propped himself up and looked at him.

“Want to take a shower?” Jiang Yuduo rolled over and lay on his back, looking at him.

“Mm.” Cheng Ke nodded.

Jiang Yuduo looked at him for a while, then reached up, cupped the back of his head, and pressed him down a little.

Cheng Ke lowered his head and kissed his lips.

The kiss was very serious, very gentle, and utterly all-out. It was a little like someone who had done something wrong and was trying desperately to seek forgiveness.

Fortunately, Jiang Yuduo did not take too long to recover. By the time Cheng Ke let him go, Jiang Yuduo was still biting his lower lip, and only after a while did he finally release him.

“Shower.” Jiang Yuduo sat up with him, his expression already back to normal.

“Is there anywhere that hurts?” Cheng Ke asked.

“What, you think your technique is so bad it made somewhere hurt?” Jiang Yuduo got out of bed and stood by it.

“…I was just being considerate.” Cheng Ke said.

“You’re just not confident in your technique.” Jiang Yuduo smiled, his grin full of smug satisfaction at having caught him in the act.

Cheng Ke sighed. “I take back what I said just now.”

“Too late,” Jiang Yuduo said as he opened the wardrobe to look for clean clothes. “My memory is excellent.”

Cheng Ke laughed but said nothing. After a while, he remembered something and asked again, “Where did you hide your phone?”

“You don’t even look for it before asking me?” Jiang Yuduo said.

“I don’t even know where to look,” Cheng Ke said. “Mainly because… I don’t have the habit of going through other people’s things…”

Jiang Yuduo turned to look at him and sighed. “I put it in my coat pocket.”

“In your coat pocket?” Cheng Ke froze.

“Mm.” Jiang Yuduo took a coat out of the wardrobe and threw it onto the bed. “The pocket of this one. I just stuck it in there… I thought…”

Cheng Ke remembered that when Jiang Yuduo left, he had only taken the coat he had swapped with him. He probably thought Cheng Ke would be the same as him, and wear his clothes…

That made Cheng Ke’s chest ache. He jumped off the bed and hugged him.

“Actually I wasn’t planning on letting you find it. I didn’t leave anything on my phone anyway,” Jiang Yuduo said, rubbing his back. “I didn’t take it because I was afraid I’d call you. If I heard your voice, I might have come straight back…”

“Mm,” Cheng Ke said, nodding. “I know.”

“If I’d left and you saw the phone right away, would you have smashed it?” Jiang Yuduo asked.

“No.” Cheng Ke said.

“What would you have done then?” Jiang Yuduo asked again.

“I probably would’ve cried,” Cheng Ke thought about it. “Or maybe not. By the day you left, I was already drowning in tears.”

“Did you cry?” Jiang Yuduo looked at him, frowning.

“What do you think.” Cheng Ke sighed.

“Really?” Jiang Yuduo was still looking at him.

Cheng Ke felt like Jiang Yuduo was like a child trying to confirm how important he was. He smiled and nodded. “Really.”

“In a flood?” Jiang Yuduo asked.

“I was crying so hard I could barely breathe.” Cheng Ke said.

Jiang Yuduo said nothing. He stared at him for a long time before suddenly pulling him into a tight embrace. “Sorry, Cheng Ke.”

“Don’t say that,” Cheng Ke said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jiang Yuduo didn’t speak. He hugged him hard a couple more times before letting go, turning his head to swipe a hand over his face. Then he grabbed his clothes and headed for the bathroom. “Want to shower together? Let’s hurry up and finish, then go eat. I’m hungry.”

“Okay.” Cheng Ke answered. Jiang Yuduo was also a strange person. At first he had needed time to recover, but once he did, he could really let loose.

When Cheng Ke took his change of clothes into the bathroom, Jiang Yuduo was already standing under the showerhead, rinsing himself off. Cheng Ke watched the water stream sliding down his body and couldn’t help replaying the scene from earlier.

When they were doing it, it really did feel like he had taken something, like he couldn’t see clearly or hear clearly. He had even been a little anxious about it. In that blurry, unclear state, it gave him the illusion that he had done all that for nothing.

But when he thought back on it, he suddenly realized everything was crystal clear.

Every glance he had seen, every sound he had heard, every inch he had touched, all of it was clear as day. Not only was it engraved in his mind, it was carved into his body, so that when he saw, heard, or touched it again, he could instantly and precisely find that second that made his breathing go ragged.

“Did I break here?” Jiang Yuduo asked, pointing back at his shoulder blade. “Feels kind of sore.”

“Let me… take a look.” Cheng Ke cleared his throat and walked over pretending to inspect him.

What was there to inspect? Of course he had broken the skin. A hard bite like that, how could it not? At the time, Jiang Yuduo’s muscles had even tightened from the pain.

“It did break a little, but it’s not serious.” Cheng Ke said.

“Fuck, you’re amazing,” Jiang Yuduo said, turning his head to look at him. “Going wild and using such a heavy hand… with your mouth.”

Cheng Ke laughed and stood under the showerhead with his back pressed against Jiang Yuduo’s. “I really didn’t mean to.”

Jiang Yuduo clicked his tongue, lowered his head to rinse off for a while, then turned around and stood facing him. Water from the showerhead sprayed past both their faces, splashing so much that it was hard to even keep their eyes open.

“Cheng Ke,” Jiang Yuduo said, his voice very low. “Just now…”

“Mm.” Cheng Ke answered, wiping water off his face, but it did no good. He couldn’t see Jiang Yuduo’s expression clearly, only sensed something in his voice and tone that he couldn’t immediately make sense of.

“Did you just now… count that as teaching me a lesson?” Jiang Yuduo asked.

“…If you want to understand it that way, sure.” Cheng Ke hadn’t expected him to ask that.

“It’s not that I want to understand it that way, it’s what you said yourself,” Jiang Yuduo said, then leaned close to his ear and repeated in his tone, “I’m going to teach you right now.”

Cheng Ke immediately felt his face burn.

What a rascal!

He actually said something so shameless!

“You done teaching me now?” Jiang Yuduo asked.

“Mm,” Cheng Ke could hear the faint dissatisfaction in Jiang Yuduo’s voice and clicked his tongue. “First lesson, Lesson One…”

Before he could finish, Jiang Yuduo suddenly reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and squeezed hard.

“Ah!” Cheng Ke shouted. The squeeze was really vicious. All he felt was a sharp, aching pain in his shoulder, and he couldn’t possibly hold it in. The cry came straight from the bottom of his heart.

Before he could figure out whether Jiang Yuduo was trying to get revenge or what, Jiang Yuduo’s hand on his shoulder had already swept around his back, and with one arm he slapped him against the wall.

If Cheng Ke hadn’t reacted fast enough and braced himself against the wall with his hands, his face would have gone straight into it.

“What are you do…” Cheng Ke roared, but before he could finish, Jiang Yuduo cut him off.

“I’m doing exactly what you’re doing,” Jiang Yuduo said, pressing against his back and wrapping an arm around his waist. “I’m handing in my homework now…”

After saying that, he added with some emotion, “I’ve never handed in homework in my life.”

“Get lost!” Cheng Ke shouted angrily.

“Not getting lost!” Jiang Yuduo shouted back, then bit down hard on his shoulder.

“Ahhh…” Cheng Ke felt like he might jump from the pain.

But at the very tail end of the pain, something else had already begun to creep in.

When a car horn sounded outside the window, Cheng Ke was curled up on the sofa playing with his phone, his legs draped over Jiang Yuduo.

“Fuck, is that Chen Qing?” He sat bolt upright.

Jiang Yuduo was trimming Mao’s nails and his hand jerked. He didn’t cut the cat, but he did tug on Mao’s paw, and Mao immediately unleashed a flurry of lightning-fast strikes at his hand before darting off the sofa and running away.

“Chen Qing doesn’t know I’m back, right?” Jiang Yuduo turned his head.

“I didn’t tell him you were coming back today, but…” Cheng Ke jumped off the sofa. “But he guessed the two of us were together. Now that he sees someone home, he definitely…”

Before he could reach the window, Chen Qing’s voice came from outside. “Jijia! Jijia! You’re back, right? Is Third Brother back too? Third Brother!”

“It really is Chen Qing!” Cheng Ke said under his breath.

Jiang Yuduo sprang up from the sofa, and the speed at which he reached the door instantly refreshed Cheng Ke’s understanding of how fast he could move.

He slammed the door and locked it.

Sure enough, the next second there was the sound of keys outside, followed by the noise of someone twisting the lock.

Cheng Ke and Jiang Yuduo stared at each other face-to-face, both staying silent.

When Chen Qing couldn’t open the door, he started knocking. Only then did Cheng Ke suddenly come back to himself. “What are we doing?”

“Mm?” Jiang Yuduo blinked.

They were fully dressed and sitting on the sofa, so why had they suddenly ended up looking like they had been caught in the act of cheating on the lawful spouse?

Probably because they had gone at it twice in one hour earlier and were feeling a bit guilty after acting so outrageously…

“Open the door!” Cheng Ke lowered his voice. “Otherwise he’ll think we’re still in the middle of it!”

Jiang Yuduo jumped in surprise and quickly rushed over to open it.

The moment the door opened, Chen Qing charged in and shouted, “Third Brother!”

“Yeah.” Jiang Yuduo answered.

“Fuck! You’re back!” Chen Qing kicked the door shut behind him, and his eyes instantly turned red. “You fucking finally came back!”

“Don’t cry,” Jiang Yuduo said, pointing at him. “If you dare cry even once, I’ll hit you.”

“You didn’t even tell me you were back!” Chen Qing swallowed his tears back down hard, glaring at Jiang Yuduo, then turned to glare at Cheng Ke. “You said you’d tell me when you got back!”

“We only just got home,” Cheng Ke said. “I haven’t had time to call you yet.”

“You should’ve called when you were setting out!” Chen Qing said. “Do you even have a brain!”

Cheng Ke had no reply. He did have a brain, but the stuff in it wasn’t these things. And he hadn’t planned on notifying Chen Qing the second he got back either, after all, he had been holding it in for so long…

But seeing Chen Qing like this now, he still felt a little guilty. After all, Chen Qing was Jiang Yuduo’s genuine, from-the-heart brother.

“Sorry. I saw him and then… forgot…” Cheng Ke glanced at Jiang Yuduo.

“It wasn’t like you were apart for years,” Jiang Yuduo said, patting Chen Qing on the back. “Why are you acting like it was life and death?”

“Mainly because you didn’t even say anything. You always told us when you went out before,” Chen Qing said, finally calming down a little.

“Perfect then,” Jiang Yuduo said. “Call Dabin and the others, let’s go eat.”

“Not just eat, we’re drinking too, and we’re staying up all night tonight.” Chen Qing slapped his thigh.

“Staying up all night.” Jiang Yuduo nodded.

“I’ll tell them now, and book a table first. What do you guys want to eat?” Chen Qing took out his phone. “You two already had lunch… huh!”

Before Chen Qing had even finished, he suddenly looked up sharply and glanced back and forth between the two of them.

“What is it?” Cheng Ke tensed immediately and quickly looked down to check his clothes. There was nothing wrong.

“Did you two just… No wonder you locked the door, damn, fuck me,” Chen Qing muttered as he turned around and covered his face, speaking in a rush. “I really didn’t mean it. I was just too anxious…”

“Shut the fuck up!” Jiang Yuduo smacked him on the back. “Does this look like…”

“Then why did it take so long to open the door.” Chen Qing sighed.

“Go make your call!” Jiang Yuduo roared. “What, you think you’ve seen through every truth in the world?”

“Hey, Dabin!” Chen Qing said into the phone. “You, right now, go book a table immediately. Anywhere is fine, sour soup fish, yeah, sour soup fish, the same place we used to go… Third Brother’s back! He just got back…”

Standing in the living room, watching Chen Qing excitedly on the phone, Jiang Yuduo suddenly felt his eyes sting.

During the time he had quietly disappeared, he had thought about many things. About whether this place, where he had once lived and existed, would change because of his leaving.

These people were part of his life, proof that he had existed. During the days he had been gone, would anyone care, would anyone notice, would anyone remember, remember him all the way through?

Cheng Ke reached out and scratched his shoulder. He turned his head.

“They’re definitely going to go crazy,” Cheng Ke said with a smile. “They’ve all been anxious about when you’d come back.”

“Mm.” Jiang Yuduo smiled too.

“You’re still Third Brother,” Cheng Ke said. “They’re still your little brothers, and Chen Qing is still your best, best friend.”

“What about you?” Jiang Yuduo asked with a smile.

“I’m your bona fide boyfriend.” Cheng Ke said softly.

“I’m also your…” Jiang Yuduo glanced toward Chen Qing. “Bona fide boyfriend.”

After Chen Qing finished the call, he coughed once before turning back around.

Cheng Ke was utterly at a loss for words about how considerate he was being. He sat on the sofa and sighed.

“Dabin and the others are together,” Chen Qing said. “They’ll be over soon. We can squeeze into one car later, three in the back and two lying down.”

“Can they even lie down?” Jiang Yuduo said.

“If they can’t, they’ll still have to. Everybody’s getting in the car.” Chen Qing said.

“I’ll drive.” Jiang Yuduo said at once.

“You two sit in front,” Chen Qing said. “What, am I supposed to let you two lie in the back?”

Jiang Yuduo smiled.

“Third Brother,” Chen Qing said, looking at him, “I’m telling you, next time you go back to your hometown or wherever, you have to tell me. You’re being way too much of a shitty friend.”

“Mm.” Jiang Yuduo answered.

Dabin and the others were probably nearby. Less than ten minutes after Chen Qing called, they could already hear the excited sound of their voices outside the window.

“Let’s go.” Jiang Yuduo stood up.

Dabin and the others were not the usual enforcers, after all, so when they saw Jiang Yuduo, they were obviously much more restrained and didn’t yell and shout.

“Third Brother,” Dabin said as he walked over and rubbed his nose. “We finally got you back.”

“Let’s go eat.” Jiang Yuduo patted his shoulder.

As the group of them squeezed into the car, Jiang Yuduo glanced to the side and looked toward the intersection. A shadow vanished quickly around the corner.

“What is it?” Cheng Ke asked quietly.

Sometimes Jiang Yuduo felt like Cheng Ke was even more sensitive than he was. He shook his head. “Nothing. Maybe it was an illusion. Dr. Li said that when I came back to the place where I used to be, I might see them again.”

“Mm.” Cheng Ke also looked that way. “Is it still there?”

“It ran off.” Jiang Yuduo said.

“They’re afraid of you.” Cheng Ke said.

“Maybe.” Jiang Yuduo smiled, opened the car door, and climbed into the driver’s seat. He gripped the steering wheel and looked once more in the rearview mirror.

This time, he didn’t see anyone.

“Everybody lying down okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” Ertu answered from the back. “Third Brother, drive faster. This position really won’t hold for long.”

“Okay.” Jiang Yuduo started the car.