Chapter 9: The Beauty Has a Fever — “Don’t Leave…”
Shen Yunqian halted his steps and squeezed his eyes shut.
As for Shen Yunqian’s attitude, Si Jinyan didn’t pay it any mind at all. He sneered, “It’s my fault. I didn’t satisfy you, leaving you so thirsty you had to go looking for that kind of person. Aren’t you just looking to get fucked? I’ll satisfy you today.”
As he spoke, Si Jinyan grabbed Shen Yunqian by the arm and slammed him onto the sofa.
He wedged one leg between the young man’s legs, his knee pressing against the upholstery, and began unbuttoning Shen’s shirt.
Shen Yunqian gripped the small knife in his pocket, then released it, struggling in terror.
His body was no longer as healthy and strong as it used to be; Si Jinyan restrained him with ease.
Si Jinyan pinned both of Shen’s wrists with one hand, burying his head in the crook of his neck to bite down violently. His other hand tore at the clothes, popping two buttons and instantly filling the air with the metallic scent of blood.
Tears streamed uncontrollably down Shen Yunqian’s face. Ignoring the pain, he blurted out a name: “Jian Luoqing!”
It was the name of Si Jinyan’s “White Moonlight”. Every time Si Jinyan heard this name, he would calm down.
Because Jian Luoqing suffered from congenital heart disease, Si Jinyan often had to go take care of him; no matter the situation, Si Jinyan would always rush to his side.
Shen Yunqian’s tears soaked into Si Jinyan’s collar, warm and damp. The sensation snapped Si Jinyan back to reality. He immediately sprang up and moved away just as his phone began to ring on the coffee table.
Cursing under his breath, Si Jinyan grabbed the phone. It was a call from Ji Huaixu; there must be an emergency at the company.
He looked back at the young man, whose eyes were hollow and lifeless. Feeling the unspeakable reaction of his own body, his face alternated between green and pale. How could he react like this to his enemy…?
“Not rolling out of here yet?”
Si Jinyan found an excuse to mask his abnormal reaction, pinning the blame on Shen Yunqian for shamelessly seducing him.
“If you want a man that badly, I can be benevolent and find a few for you.”
Shen Yunqian’s eyes were dead silent as he stared blankly at the expensive crystal chandelier on the ceiling. “…You promised me. Don’t… involve innocent people.”
It wasn’t until the person had left that Si Jinyan looked back at his phone. There was no response; the other side must have hung up after the long wait.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the crutch lying on the carpet and scoffed. “He certainly puts on a full show. Two years ago he faked amnesia, and now he’s starting to fake being a cripple.”
Outside the villa, the sky suddenly opened up, pouring down rain. In the blink of an eye, Shen Yunqian’s clothes were soaked through, and the blood on his neck was washed away.
Si Jinyan had taken the initiative to ask him for a “gesture.” Regardless of whether it worked out, he probably wouldn’t make a move on Lu Xunye anymore. As for everything else…
Shen Yunqian tilted his head, letting the fierce rain slap indiscriminately against his face.
Only when the suffocation left him gasping for air did he lower his head. He raised a hand to wipe the water from his face, his gaze gradually turning calm and cold—a world of difference from the person who had shown weakness inside the villa just moments ago.
His fingernails dug into the wound left on his neck, clawing at it ruthlessly. He grimaced in pain, but a wave of nausea surged in his throat.
“Disgusting.”
…
Lu Xunye found no one at the sealed, abandoned Shen family old mansion, which looked like a haunted house, so he went to the cemetery.
He went around in circles searching several places, getting completely soaked in the process.
He glanced at the time; it was almost 3:00 AM. In the end, he went back.
A living person shouldn’t be that stupid; maybe he had already gone back.
Returning to the residential complex, just as he was about to unlock his own door, he looked toward the opposite door as if guided by some invisible force.
When he withdrew his gaze, he spotted a puddle of water on the floor, reflecting the light from the corridor’s motion-sensor lamp.
A flash of surprise passed through his eyes, followed by relief. He must be okay.
He had just placed his hand on his own doorknob and turned his wrist when a vague system voice suddenly sounded: “Host, you’re finally back! The Protagonist Shou seems to be in danger.”
Lu Xunye immediately let go, turning his head to look around the corridor. Unable to locate the source of the sound, he hurriedly asked, “Where are you right now?”
The next moment, the door behind him clicked open from the inside, and the chubby body of a silver-white long-haired cat squeezed out.
Lu Xunye watched it squeeze through the crack in the door, lifting his eyes to confirm that this was indeed Shen Yunqian’s apartment.
Ignoring everything else, Lu Xunye pushed the door open and barged in, asking as he walked, “Where is he?”
He anxiously searched around in a circle but didn’t see anyone.
The bedroom was locked from the inside. The long-haired cat followed him from the entrance. He anxiously pounded on the door with his fist twice. No movement. “F*ck.”
“Were you in his bedroom just now? How did you get out?” He looked down at the system. “Open the door.”
“Just now, the Protagonist Shou was lying on the bed, asleep… I think. Then he mumbled that he was thirsty. I wanted to get him water, but when I came back, I don’t know how the door got locked.”
The system explained, “Then I heard something fall inside the room—it made a huge noise—and then I sensed you were back.”
It looked up guiltily, only to see Lu Xunye had somehow produced a paperclip, straightened it, inserted it into the keyhole, and wiggled it a few times to easily open the door.
The series of actions was so smooth and practiced it left the system dumbfounded.
Since when did his Host know how to do this? It made the system feel truly useless.
Lu Xunye entered and saw Shen Yunqian fallen at the foot of the bed. His pupils constricted, and he rushed over to help the person up, laying him back on the bed and reaching out to pull the duvet over him.
The young man’s body was scorching hot, his face flushed red. The broken hair on his forehead was soaked with sweat, plastering wetly against his skin.
Lu Xunye checked his forehead. Sure enough, he had a fever again. Yesterday’s illness hadn’t fully healed, and now he had been caught in the rain again.
The system jumped up, its four short legs standing on the pristine white bedding. The dirt on its body, washed by the rain, dripped muddy water. It held its tail high, craning its neck to look at Shen Yunqian.
It was the lowest-level system in the System Bureau. It had finally bound a host and received a mission, only to see the Protagonist Shou injured again. Grief rose from its heart.
“Host, is he okay? He’s the Protagonist Shou, he can’t die! If he dies, the whole world will collapse. If the mission isn’t completed, we can’t leave either.”
The noisy chatter was endless. Lu Xunye glanced at it sideways, seeing its muddy paw prints all over the clean duvet cover. He exhaled gently, suppressing his anger. “Get off!”
Caught off guard, Xiao Ai was startled by the shout and jumped off the bed, leaving the room with its head drooping and tail tucked, curling up at the doorway.
It didn’t notice that the wallpaper behind it had also been smeared with mud.
With the annoying noise gone, Lu Xunye finally looked at Shen Yunqian.
He lifted the corner of the duvet, grabbing the young man’s hand to tuck it inside before going to find fever medicine.
But just as he put the hand into the duvet, his hand was grabbed back.
“You’re awake.” Lu Xunye was delighted, but seeing the person’s eyes still tightly closed, he corrected himself, “Not awake, huh.”
He extricated his hand, lifting the duvet with both hands to pile it up around Shen Yunqian’s neck.
The fever-dazed person began to sweat, feeling as if he were being roasted by a raging fire. His blood boiled, and he rubbed back and forth, trying to stick to anything cool.
Lu Xunye had been out in the cold rain for several hours and hadn’t had time to change clothes to warm up. At this moment, his semi-dry clothes clung to his body, and his skin was ice-cold.
So when Shen Yunqian’s burning face touched Lu Xunye’s arm, it was like someone in magma finding a block of ice.
The hand that had just been tucked into the duvet restlessly reached out to climb up his arm, whimpering a complaint in a low voice: “…Hot.”
Acting so spoiled and dependent now, he bore no resemblance to his usual cold and distant self when awake; it was like two completely different people.
Feeling the body heat seeping through his skin into his very marrow, Lu Xunye actually felt a tingling sensation in the places the other touched, and his heart trembled inexplicably.
He shook his head. He was definitely overthinking it; the rain must have made him stupid.
He pressed his ice-cold palm against Shen Yunqian’s cheek.
Applying slight pressure, his fingertips sank into the soft, hot, and smooth flesh of his face. The young man’s lips parted slightly due to the action, looking both funny and cute.
Lu Xunye’s eyes curved into a smile. Ignoring whether the unconscious person could hear him, he spoke to himself.
“Tell me, why are you so unlucky every time I see you? Making me unlucky too…”
He leaned in close to the young man’s face, watching his eyelashes tremble from restless sleep.
maintaining the posture of his hand, he gently shook the young man’s face, his voice carrying a faint smile. “Tell me… are you specifically here to jinx me?”
Because he was so close, Lu Xunye saw a scar the size of an ant under Shen Yunqian’s right eye, looking as if a piece of skin had been gouged out. Was this scar a tear mole before?
It was this small scar that gave Shen Yunqian’s fair, exquisite face a tiny flaw, making him appear more real and dispelling that ethereal, unapproachable fairy-like aura.
Should he say: as expected of the Protagonist Shou? Lu Xunye thought. He’s truly beautiful.
His fingertips gently rubbed the scar under Shen Yunqian’s eye twice, imagining the young man with a tear mole.
After a long while, he spat out two words: “You seductress.”
Shen Yunqian frowned in discomfort, tilting his head to struggle. Lu Xunye subconsciously curled his lips, but his gaze paused when it landed on the exposed neck.
There, on the slender, pale neck, was a glaring, bleeding bite mark, accompanied by several ambiguous red marks.
Lu Xunye’s gaze turned dangerous as it returned to Shen Yunqian’s face, his tone filled with resentment. “I ran all over the city looking for you, didn’t even sleep, and you? You went out to provoke a mad dog.”
He sighed. Resigning himself to his fate, he stood up to leave, only to have his hand grabbed. The person in the dream pleaded confusedly: “…Don’t go.”
Lu Xunye huffed coldly, replying contrary to his heart, “I’m not leaving. Do you want to burn to death?”
He pulled Shen Yunqian’s hand away and left. Naturally, he didn’t know that after he walked away, a tear slid from the corner of the young man’s tightly closed eyes, disappearing into his hair as he whispered softly: “…Brother.”
afterward, Lu Xunye immediately spotted a medicine chest in a prominent place in Shen Yunqian’s living room. After opening it, he let out a “Whoa.” The space inside was significant, and there was quite a lot of medicine.
“You could open a pharmacy with this.”
Thinking of the young man’s frail body, he clicked his tongue. “This physique is too fragile.”
He mixed a cup of fever medicine and fed it to him, having to deal with the sick patient clinging to him like an octopus to cool down.
By the time the fever finally went down, it was already the next morning.
…
When Shen Yunqian woke up, it was already ten o’clock. He shook off his drowsiness.
Opening his eyes, he looked at the clean grey-blue duvet covering him and buried his face in it.
Lingering at the tip of his nose was the familiar scent of laundry detergent—it was definitely the one he used.
But didn’t he remember this duvet being white? Was it an illusion?
There was a glass of water on the bedside table. He sat up and picked it up. The sides of the glass above the water level were covered with many small water droplets from condensation, yet the water was cold.
Perhaps the hot water had gone cold. Did he sleepwalk to pour water?
Shen Yunqian’s thoughts surged like a tide. It was getting weirder; everything was weird. He was the only one in the bedroom, yet he vaguely felt like he had forgotten something.
I fear that even if someone told him now that he had transmigrated to a parallel universe, or was reborn a few years later, he would accept it calmly.
It couldn’t be that a thief broke into his house and changed his duvet, right?
Shen Yunqian looked at himself uncertainly again. Hmm, pajamas hadn’t changed…
However, this strange train of thought shattered into pieces when Shen Yunqian went out and saw the duvet cover and bedding hanging on the balcony drying rack.
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