KMYB | Chapter 4

During the break in theory class, Xi Shui passed Zhou Zeqi’s friend request.

Group…

Friends weren't really friends. Classmates… weren't even in the same college, not even the same year, either. Xi Shui poked at the screen with his finger and created a new friend group for Zhou Zeqi: Neighbor.

But worried there might be other neighbors in the future, Xi Shui added a note in parentheses after Zhou Zeqi’s name: (Neighbor No. 1).

"Xiao Xi~ what are you doing~" Lin Xiaojin’s head suddenly leaned over.

Xi Shui was so startled by him that he even forgot to breathe. He slammed his phone into the desk. "You scared me."

Lin Xiaojin studied Xi Shui’s expression, then burst out laughing. "Are you searching on Baidu whether dating burns calories?"

Compared with being found out for becoming WeChat friends with Zhou Zeqi, Xi Shui felt the latter was much more unspeakable. He nodded. "Can’t I look it up?"

"You found something?" Lin Xiaojin was delighted. "I didn’t expect you to actually look. Show me, show me."

Xi Shui pressed down on his phone and refused to let Lin Xiaojin take it. His face reddened in frustration. "If you want to see it, look it up yourself."

"You already looked it up, so why should I? Let me see. If it really works, I’ll go date someone right away."

"How can you date someone just for something like that?!" Xi Shui’s eyes widened a little more than usual.

Unlike the absent-minded, slightly dazed impression he gave people in daily life, Xi Shui had a pair of peach blossom eyes that were naturally alluring and flirtatious. It was just that his gaze was especially pure and clean, so that bit of light seduction and charm hardly showed through.

Lin Xiaojin had become friends with Xi Shui because he was drawn in by his looks. After that, almost every day he would be drawn in several more times until he lost the ability to think, especially since Xi Shui always looked as if he were beautiful without knowing it.

Xi Shui knew that. He just felt that wasn’t the most important thing.

Lin Xiaojin had once discussed this issue with him. Xi Shui had quietly stated his view: I’m not just good at one thing.

Lin Xiaojin leaned across the desk and stared at Xi Shui with wide eyes. "Xiao Xi, you’re kind of pure and sexy."

"What does pure and sexy mean?"

"Pure enough to go to jail."

"Then I’m not pure and sexy." As he spoke, Xi Shui took out his phone and lowered his head to scroll to the school forum.

On the first page of the forum there was already a thread with more than twenty thousand replies. Even if it sank for a while, the next day new replies would push it back to the top.

This thread had appeared near the end of last semester. To be more precise, it was on the night of the day Xi Shui’s college held its final semester showcase performance near the end of last semester.

Back then, they were dining off campus. Lin Xiaojin had seen the post while scrolling and showed it to Xi Shui.

There were a total of ten CPs, male-male, male-female, female-female, cat-dog, cat-bird. Among the male-male pairings, three stood out. One was two freshmen, rumored to have grown up together. One was the two new security guards at Nanyuan and Xiyuan. And the last was Xi Shui and Zhou Zeqi.

Beijing Dance and Beijing Sports had never had anything to do with each other. Unless there was some school-wide event and the two colleges needed to put on performances, they would hardly ever have a chance to meet.

That was the only photo of Xi Shui and Zhou Zeqi together that hadn’t been edited.

The location was the auditorium for the showcase.

The main characters were Xi Shui and Zhou Zeqi.

The supporting cast was Xi Shui and his classmates, as well as Zhou Zeqi and his bros.

Zhou Zeqi was in the audience, in a very remote corner. A bunch of guys crowded into that corner, which made sense. Their showcase tickets were only distributed within the college, and Beijing Sports didn’t have any.

Zhou Zeqi leaned against the wall, a blade of grass that looked as if it had been plucked from a flower bed dangling from his mouth. He was wearing a white basketball uniform, and his sharp brows and thin, cold-looking lips were hidden in the shadows. His posture looked as lazy as could be.

Only his eyes were bright and fierce, fixed dead on the stage.

Xi Shui onstage was playing Chang’e. Their rehearsal piece that time was *Chang’e Flying to the Moon*, with the male and female roles swapped.

Xi Shui’s costume was simple. White fabric flowed like clouds and jade, and the belt cinched his waist so tightly it seemed almost impossible to get a grip on. The costume looked exquisite, but the spotless white performance outfit could not compare to even one-tenth of the dancer’s beauty. He didn’t wear any overly elaborate hanging ornaments on his head, just a teardrop-shaped crystal at the center of his brow, and a white ribbon tied around his forehead, knotted at the back of his head, the ribbon trailing all the way to the floor.

Xi Shui spun twenty-five times in the very center of the stage, his center never moving even an inch, and Zhou Zeqi below didn’t blink once.

The moment the photo went up, the popularity of this CP shot straight to the top.

At the time, everyone thought Beijing Dance and Beijing Sports were about to be married off to each other, even Lin Xiaojin asked Xi Shui, "Are you secretly dating Zhou Yanwang?"

Though Xi Shui denied it.

That still didn’t stop Lin Xiaojin from checking into the thread every day.

This was Xi Shui’s second time clicking into the post.

The reason the heat had risen again was that last night, Xi Shui and Zhou Zeqi had appeared in the same frame at the gym for the first time in months, even though they hadn’t sat together.

[Thanks to the official pair feeding me sugar, ah~]

[Beijing Dance and Beijing Sports have always been incompatible, it must be an underground romance.]

[Xi Shui is so good-looking. Is there a link to that shoulder bag?]

[That was issued by Beijing Dance. Everyone has one. It’s like office workers going into the city. That bag only looks good on him. Try it on someone else. Haven’t you seen that hardly anyone in Beijing Dance even carries that bag.]

Seeing the topic get more and more ridiculous, Xi Shui didn’t think too much about it. He moved his finger and replied to one person in the thread.

[Xi Shui: Zhou Zeqi and I aren’t in an underground romance. I don’t know him.]

[Xi Shui: What is "feeding sugar"?]

[Xi Shui: This bag just looks bad, but it really suits me when worn.]

A few seconds after Xi Shui finished his "clarification," Lin Xiaojin suddenly whipped his head around. "You posted in the forum using your real identity?"

"Uh… aren’t you all using your real identities?"

Lin Xiaojin casually clicked into someone’s homepage and handed the phone to Xi Shui. "Have you ever seen anyone whose real name is Big Jiji?"

The forum was anonymous. Unless necessary, no one would take off their disguise.

Because it was anonymous, everyone dared to run around without pants.

Lin Xiaojin could already imagine what these people would say to Xi Shui. His little swan had fallen into a hama nest.[[1]]

[Is that really the person?]

[There are no posts on the homepage, but it says they’re from Beijing Dance, age 85, avatar is a white swan, and the way they speak is exactly like the legend says. This official judge rules, ninety percent chance it’s the real thing.]

[Xi Shui!!! Come on, let sister give you a kiss!!!]

[Xi Shui really isn’t dating Zhou Yanwang? Then mom can relax. Zhou Yanwang would kiss you until you couldn’t breathe!]

[Yeah, yeah, do you know? Zhou Yanwang runs a thousand meters in just over two minutes and doesn’t even pant. A basketball flying over from far away can be punched all the way to the field by him. You can’t do it, you guys can’t do it.]

[Is ballet hard for Xi Shui? You look so thin, are you not eating properly~]

Xi Shui frowned. He had absolutely no idea how things had developed into this. Clarifying the misunderstanding was what he should do. They couldn’t keep misunderstanding him like this.

But how could there be sisters asking for kisses, and how could there also be moms…

Lin Xiaojin snatched his phone away. "Don’t look anymore. Right now it’s sisters and moms. In a bit, they’ll transform into supermen who don’t wear pants."

Fine, then he wouldn’t look.

Xi Shui picked up the pen from the desk and started copying the notes from the PPT, thinking that when he got home tonight, he’d search Baidu for what a pantsless superman was.

Lin Xiaojin turned off Xi Shui’s phone and shoved it into his backpack. "How about we have barbecue this weekend, at your place?"

"We’ll buy the ingredients ourselves, cheaper that way. Call Zhaomengzi and the others too." Zhao Mengzi was their roommate, and they got along well too. When Xi Shui wasn’t at school, Lin Xiaojin hung out with them.

"Okay." Xi Shui agreed without hesitation.

"I want beef tallow, fragrant! Greasy and sizzling!"

"That’s so high in calories."

"We’re eating it anyway, who cares how high the calories are? And bring a can of cola too!"

–

Just after May Day, summer arrived in Beijing with drums and gongs. In the afternoon, the sun still hung high overhead, as if it could melt both a person and the basketball court together.

Zhou Zeqi had no class that afternoon. After self-studying the freshman-year economics and management courses in his dorm, he was called to the field by Wu Fengyi to play basketball.

Wu Fengyi played for half an hour before ducking into the shade of a tree to drink water.

He took a quick look at his phone.

He had turned on forum message notifications. The moment he unlocked the screen, the first thing he saw was a message pushed by the forum moderator.

Beijing Dance’s Xi Shui suddenly appeared, with the purpose of clarifying the rumored romance with Beijing Sports’s Zhou Yanwang. The CP fans’ hearts shattered one after another, and they all turned around to ship themselves and Xi Shui instead!!!

Wu Fengyi: "…"

Because Xi Shui himself had shown up, the thread’s popularity had climbed even higher.

The moment Wu Fengyi went in, he tripped over a pair of pants on the ground.

Among the words that appeared most frequently were "kiss kiss," "touch touch," "fuck fuck"…

The way Xi Shui spoke was in stark contrast to the impression his appearance gave. Wu Fengyi had seen him last night. He had been very quiet, his expression cool, sitting in the audience with an aloof, untouchable air.

"I called you to play ball, and you’re hiding out here yourself?" Zhou Zeqi’s voice came lazily from behind him.

He had an arm around the basketball he was used to playing with, and his 6'3" height gave off an especially strong sense of pressure.

Wu Fengyi and Zhou Zeqi had been bros since high school. He tossed the phone into Zhou Zeqi’s arms. "Take a look. Xi Shui came out to clarify and told them to stop shipping you two."

Zhou Zeqi lowered his head and glanced at Xi Shui’s words on the forum.

Not.

Not familiar.

The bag looks good.

"…"

Zhou Zeqi subconsciously ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth. "It was already a bunch of people in the forum making noise for nothing."

He handed the phone back to Wu Fengyi. Wu Fengyi didn’t even look at it. He waved a hand and tossed the phone into his backpack, while asking Zhou Zeqi, "When other people were making noise for nothing before, you’d get annoyed. This time they’ve been making noise for months and you still haven’t reacted. What are you putting on for me? I’m guessing right now you’d rather rush onto the field and sing 'Men Cry, Cry, Cry, It’s Not a Crime.'"

Zhou Zeqi turned his head, his gaze on Wu Fengyi’s face cold and lazy. He smiled. "Wu Wing, want to play a round?"

"…"

Xi Shui finished evening self-study at 8:40. After saying goodbye to Lin Xiaojin, he left the back hill behind the teaching building.

Spring had only just passed, and the shrubs on the back hill were still blooming with tiny flowers. The air carried a strong scent of blossoms and grass and trees.

A streetlamp lit up every few meters. This place was right next to the library. During the day students came and went, but at night it became especially secluded.

Xi Shui had his earphones on. Go up the hill first, then down the hill, then pass through the park, and he’d be home.

It wasn’t until his earphones automatically switched songs that Xi Shui heard footsteps behind him, not loud, not soft.

!

Xi Shui pressed a hand to his earphones and paused the music. Holding his breath, he slowed his steps and turned around. The overly handsome face of his new neighbor appeared under the streetlamp.

"It’s you." They lived in the same residential complex, so running into each other was normal.

Zhou Zeqi walked up beside Xi Shui and they continued side by side. "Who did you think it was?" His tone carried a bit of a sour, sarcastic edge. Xi Shui thought it was odd, but couldn’t quite make it out.

Xi Shui took off his earphones and put them into his backpack. "I thought it was a bad person."

"You think I’m not a bad person?" Zhou Zeqi raised a brow. He saw the streetlamp fall across Xi Shui’s face, the dense shadow cast by his long, thick eyelashes.

"No… no," Xi Shui said. "We’re schoolmates."

A few of the streetlamps here had broken last week.

When Xi Shui went down the steps, he walked very carefully, afraid of twisting an ankle and delaying dance practice.

Zhou Zeqi also slowed down with him.

The steps had been here for years. Some parts were damaged, but the school said that was vintage and never bothered to fix them.

In the almost pitch-black surroundings, with the distant teaching building still giving lectures for other majors and Zhou Zeqi silent by his side, Xi Shui drifted off.

And the result of those few seconds of distraction was that Xi Shui stepped into a hole, his body lurching forward as he pitched ahead. His heartbeat instantly sped up, and Xi Shui quickly shut his eyes and clenched his teeth.

The pain he had expected never came. He was yanked back by the person beside him and fell into that person’s arms, crashing against a hard chest. In the space of a breath, he caught a scent he didn’t usually smell.

Zhou Zeqi steadied him. "What are you sniffing?"

Xi Shui lifted his head, thanked him, then after a slight pause in his tone, said in surprise, "Zhou Zeqi, you smell so good. So nice to smell."