Chapter 60: Broken Dream – Ge Picked Me Up, You Have to Take Responsibility.
Jiang Yunian’s back was pressed tightly against the wall; there was no retreat. Jiang Yan’s figure completely loomed over him. The shadow cast had substance, pressing down until his fingertips shivered with tiny tremors.
He looked up at this incomparably familiar face before him. He had touched every inch of that skin with his own hands. Clearly just last night, they were snuggling, rubbing temples, sharing each other’s body temperature and breath. Yet overnight, it had become unrecognizable.
His Adam’s apple rolled with difficulty. He heard himself squeeze out a dry voice, “Chen Zhixian… what was that about?”
Hearing this, Jiang Yan paused extremely lightly. His long lashes lowered slowly, then raised again. Even though he said nothing, just from his expressionless face, Jiang Yunian read his silence. The last bit of luck in his heart was completely shattered.
My guess was indeed correct.
Those warm moments, that redemption, that seemingly pure love… were all fake. Only the despair before his eyes was real.
How could… it become like this?
He couldn’t believe from start to finish that this gloomy, paranoid person before him could be the Ah Yan who acted coquettishly toward him, eyes filled with pure dependence.
“Why…”
“Why?” Jiang Yan repeated lowly, the prolonged ending sound carrying a morbid playfulness. He lifted his chin, exhaling faintly: “Isn’t it because Ge is too disobedient.”
Jiang Yunian was forced to look up, feeling the displeasure of the other party from the force on his chin. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand where he had wronged him. He was the one who pulled Jiang Yan from the mud and gave him a home. Why was the exchange this kind of result?
“Ge knows I like you,” Jiang Yan’s fingertips applied slight force, extremely controlling. “While shamelessly seducing me, you were also unclear with others… This is being bad.”
Jiang Yunian’s brows knit tight, confusion deepening. He endured, “I said, I have nothing with them…”
“Nothing?” Jiang Yan hooked his lips, eyes mocking. “Even if nothing, you shouldn’t have kept stringing me along.”
His voice suddenly sank, as if suppressed to the extreme. “Not accepting me but not pushing me away, making me like a dog wagging its tail and begging for pity, only able to lick you idiotically from behind, watching you make eyes at others… What did you expect me to do with you, Ge?”
Jiang Yunian was shocked into a full-body tremble by the distortion in his words. His shoulder was grabbed by him, transmitting clear pain. “I… I never thought like that…”
His mouth was pressed abruptly. The back of his head pressed tightly against the wall. Jiang Yunian could only be forced to reveal a pair of eyes filled with fear, looking at this face close at hand, pupils revealing madness.
“Does Ge have no responsibility at all for me doing this?” Jiang Yan’s voice was pressed very low, very low, as if placed in the void. “From the day I woke up, my whole world was only Ge. Only Ge was truly good to me. Is it strange for me to like Ge? Does Ge know? I like you so much it’s killing me… Every day, every moment thinking, how can I turn Ge completely into mine? Thinking until I get hard.”
He leaned closer, nose tips almost touching, breath mingling. “But no matter how I hinted, Ge played dumb. You neither accepted me nor pushed me away completely, stringing me along like this… Ge, I’m not a gentleman who can sit still without disorder. How could I endure such torture? So, I could only use my own way to make Ge stay by my side willingly. Facts prove Ge also likes me, right? If you were obedient from the start, I like Ge so much, how could I bear… to make you sad?”
Jiang Yunian listened to this string of shocking confessions, shaken until his brain roared. It took a long time to digest those words that were no different from harassment. He looked at him blankly. Hurt tears fell from the corners of his eyes, dropping one by one onto his hand, leaving hot wet marks, dismantling the imprisonment instantly.
“You simply don’t like me…” Jiang Yunian choked with sobs. “No one… no one likes like this…”
That rolling hot tear seemed to scald his heart. The mask of ease on Jiang Yan’s face finally showed a crack, leaking a trace of imperceptible panic.
“Why are you crying?” he asked in a low voice, using his thumb to brush away the tears at the corner of his eye, again and again, tirelessly, yet unable to wipe them clean.
“…”
Jiang Yunian closed his eyes, letting the tears flow. How he wished none of this had happened. Jiang Yan was still the most perfect existence in his eyes. They would cook together in the small kitchen, nest in the sofa watching boring TV programs, and hug to sleep at night. The days plain but happy and full.
But the darkness before his eyes, the strange oppression on his body, were all cruelly reminding him: The dream is broken.
“Alright, these are all in the past.” Jiang Yan tried to make his voice restore its usual gentleness, but listening carefully, one could still distinguish a trace of tension. “Blame me… blame me for liking Ge too much, using incorrect methods. But I will compensate you.”
He looked at this dull face, dull and pale countenance. Somewhere in his heart throbbed inexplicably; it seemed something was escaping control. He forcibly suppressed the complicated emotions, slowing his voice, carrying a coaxing meaning. “We’ll be just like before, okay? Isn’t Ge the best at playing dumb? Pretend not to know anything this time too, okay? We were very happy when together, weren’t we?”
Like before?
After doing such things to him, he still had the face to ask him to pretend nothing happened, to be like before?
Long ago he discovered sometimes he couldn’t see through him; at this moment it was unprecedentedly strange. Jiang Yunian shook his head in a trance, pushing him forcefully. “No… impossible… this isn’t right… this is wrong…”
So what if he liked him? So what if happy? Feelings gained by cheating were incorrect, were wrong!
He even started self-doubting, thinking about where things went wrong. Otherwise, how did a perfectly fine person get raised into a pervert by him?
This was harder for him to face than direct harm.
Jiang Yan’s brows furrowed. “What’s wrong with liking Ge?”
“Like?” Jiang Yunian said with a trembling voice. “Your liking is too selfish… You only think of yourself, never considering my feelings.”
As if hit by the words, Jiang Yan was rarely silent. The air stagnated. “I didn’t want to do this either, but asking me to give Ge to someone else is harder than killing me.”
He took a deep breath, trying to regain control of the situation, but the hand holding him faintly revealed nervousness. “This time I was wrong. I said, I will compensate Ge…”
“Let go of me!” Jiang Yunian suddenly broke free from his hand. His whole person became very resistant to his touch. He lowered his head, unwilling to look at him, repeating over and over in his mouth that this wasn’t right, couldn’t be like this…
Jiang Yan was made faintly irritable by this resistant posture. His scant patience was about to be exhausted.
“What do you want?” Jiang Yan said with patience. “Tell me, what do you want me to do? As long as you want it, I will do anything…”
Jiang Yunian curled up in the corner. After a long time, he used a voice almost inaudible to spit out two words: “You leave…”
Jiang Yan froze, face full of disbelief, pupils contracting abruptly. “What did you say? You want to… break up with me?”
“…”
This sentence thoroughly touched his reverse scale. The calm barely maintained on Jiang Yan’s face and the only shred of guilt vanished, replaced by a gloominess bordering on hideousness.
“I tell you, don’t even think about it!” He grabbed Jiang Yunian’s wrist forcefully, with strength great enough to almost pinch into the bone marrow.
Jiang Yunian was scared by his hostility, struggling to leave. He pulled hard at the door, but just as a crack appeared, he was ruthlessly suppressed by a palm from behind. Jiang Yan trapped him firmly between the door panel and his body, voice deep and dangerous. “If you dare have this kind of thought, then don’t leave.”
Jiang Yunian was trapped in the dim corner, looking up at Jiang Yan’s blurry and cold silhouette against the light. A chill shot from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head. “You… what do you mean?”
Jiang Yan was silent. The possessiveness written in his eyes already explained everything.
“No matter what, Ge also fell in love with me, right?” He leaned down, fingers rubbing Jiang Yunian’s wet, slippery cheek. “I said it before. Ge picked me up, you have to take responsibility for me.”
Jiang Yunian never thought in this life that a moment of kindness would be exchanged for inviting a wolf into the house.
Regretting now was useless.
He was locked up by Jiang Yan.
Tianshan Renjian, Top Floor Suite.
Consciousness gradually returned. Jiang Yunian woke up again to find himself in an extremely luxurious hotel.
He was wearing a high-quality bathrobe. Beneath him was an unusually soft large bed. The room had constant temperature air conditioning, warm as spring and summer. He looked around blankly. Entering his eyes were a brilliant crystal chandelier, smooth marble floors, a bright independent bathroom, and even a small, exquisite open kitchen. Outside the huge floor-to-ceiling window was a sea of churning clouds. Sunlight spilled down through the cloud layers, stinging his eyes into narrowing.
One could imagine how high the floor was. This strange environment was permeated with the smell of money everywhere. He couldn’t help worrying in his heart: How much does this cost? And how did I get here?
After a brief confusion, the memories of last night flashed through his mind scene by scene. Those despairs and arguments were all clearly branded. Jiang Yunian’s face sank. He only remembered suffering an emotional breakdown last night, wanting to flee, Jiang Yan blocking him, and later he cried until tired. Everything after that fell into darkness. He didn’t know how long he slept. Suddenly remembering he had class today and tutoring at night, his heart panicked, and he began to look for his phone frantically.
“Di.”
The sound of the smart lock opening came from the door behind him, and a figure walked in.
“Looking for what?”
This voice tightened Jiang Yunian’s heart; his movements paused. He turned stiffly to face that face. Jiang Yan looked no different from usual, expression calm, even carrying a bit of gentleness, as if nothing had happened.
“My phone…”
Jiang Yan said he accidentally broke it and took it to be repaired. Jiang Yunian listened, intuition telling him something was wrong, but the other party was too composed, unable to find a trace of lying. He looked at the bathrobe that was out of place on him, then landed on that face that now seemed to have changed nothing yet changed everything. “Where is this? Where are my clothes?”
Jiang Yan didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he walked closer slowly and sat by the bed. Jiang Yunian was startled by this action and shrank back, body tense.
“Afraid of me?” Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow slightly.
Jiang Yunian hugged his knees, nestling on the other side of the bed, not looking at him. Jiang Yan didn’t mind his silence, arranging things on his own: “The clothes were taken to be washed; new ones will be sent over later. School and the tutoring side, I’ve asked for leave for you. Ge has been too tired lately; just take this opportunity to rest more.”
Jiang Yunian saw him arranging everything, looking like he didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
He hesitated, a terrible thought surfacing in his mind. “You… you want to lock me up here?”
A slight loosening appeared on Jiang Yan’s face; silence was tacit admission.
“This is Zhou Shu’s territory, very safe. Ge just live here peacefully for these days.”
“You… you…” Jiang Yunian was angry to the point of incoherence. “You crazy person…”
He couldn’t bear it. Regardless of everything, he got off the bed and ran barefoot toward the door, pulling the handle forcefully. That door, however, didn’t move a muscle.
Behind him, Jiang Yan watched his futile struggle and said faintly, “Before Ge thinks clearly, stop saying those angry words. Willing to go back obediently with me, be together properly like before, then we go home.”
Jiang Yunian clawed weakly at the door panel, eye rims red again. “No…”
Asking him to pretend nothing happened, he couldn’t do it.
The other party’s resistance was expected. Jiang Yan wasn’t anxious; instead, he enjoyed this process of keeping a mistress in a golden house. Even, if possible, hiding him like this for a lifetime wouldn’t be bad.
But there was one point: he hoped his Ge could learn to obey.
“Relax, won’t stay here too long.” Jiang Yan walked over, gently wiping away the tears at the corner of his eye. The hand holding his shoulder as he struggled exerted force secretly. “Ge also doesn’t want everyone to know that you and I… are committing incest, right?”
Jiang Yunian froze, his face turning pale, instantly quieting down. “You… you bastard!”
“Even if I let Ge go back now, would Ge still let me in the door?” Jiang Yan enunciated every word in his ear. “At that time, I will go find Ge every day, begging you not to drive me away. Tell me, if the neighbors see, what will they think? Ge doesn’t like me lying; if they ask, I can only say it’s because Ge wants to break up with me… I don’t mind telling others our relationship, but Ge, what about you? Can you bear it?”
“You know, I can do it.”
“Don’t…”
“Beg you, don’t be like this…” Jiang Yunian was easy to manipulate; fear quickly flowed from his eyes.
Jiang Yan lifted his chin. “Then be obedient, hm?”
Jiang Yunian looked at him, body trembling slightly. His throat felt blocked, unable to say another word of resistance.
“Don’t be afraid, I’ll give you time to think slowly.” Jiang Yan didn’t want to really scare the person bad. His expression softened. He leaned over to pick him up in a princess carry, put him back on the bed, used his warm palm to warm the bare feet, then gently tucked them into the quilt.
Throughout the process, Jiang Yunian was like a puppet, at his mercy, trembling with fear, not daring to have the slightest disobedience. Beneath the physical compliance, however, was endless desolation.
Translator’s Note: And thus begins the “Golden Cage” arc. Jiang Yan really played the “social death” card to trap him. Poor Yunian is completely out of his depth. See you in the next chapter!
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