Chapter 7: How Deep Is Your Love
After returning, the two fell into a cold war. To be precise, Yu She unilaterally ignored Ying.
The main reason was that it had been fine the day they returned without any particularly huge reaction, but when Yu She woke up the next morning, the purplish-blue fingerprint bruises on his shoulders looked even more terrifying against his pale skin. If it were in modern society, it would look exactly like a case of domestic violence.
His mouth was also burning with pain. When Yu She was washing his face and checked his reflection in the river, his anger instantly flared up to his throat. In the reflection in the water, his mouth was swollen incredibly high, looking as if a circle of sausage had been embedded onto his beautiful face.
He ground his molars with restraint, glaring fiercely at the idiot brushing his teeth obediently next to him, and clenched his fists.
A few days ago, Yu She found a plant in the forest whose texture felt like toothbrush bristles. After fiddling with it for several days, he successfully made two toothbrushes.
The day they were done, he excitedly showed them to Ying, demonstrating how to use them. After demonstrating, he asked Ying to use it once to check if he had learned it.
Ying confidently picked up that strange wooden handle, thinking it was so simple and that he had memorized it all. He had to let the female know how amazing he was.
So, he applied a bit of force in his mouth… and that wooden stick snapped right from the middle…
Snapped… snapped… snapped…
Yu She’s mind buzzed with those words. He had fiddled with it for so long, and his eyesight was poor to begin with. When inserting the bristles, he had to hold it very close and look carefully, almost going blind in the process. Yet, with just a touch, his hard work was destroyed; a massive project of several days had only survived for a few minutes.
What was even more infuriating was that Ying looked in confusion at the half-stick of wood in his hand, holding the broken half of the “toothbrush” head in his mouth, and then looked suspiciously at Yu She standing to the side.
He had an expression of “it has nothing to do with me” and “how did this happen,” displaying his innocence to the fullest, making you unable to even voice the words to scold him.
Yu She: Endure, I’ll endure. Ying is just too strong; he didn’t do it on purpose.
Then, he painstakingly made another one. When he handed it to Ying, he told him to be extremely careful and repeatedly urged him to pinch it gentler.
And the time before last, he went out and spent the whole morning catching a live pheasant. He originally wanted to raise it for eggs. He tied it to a tree, but before a day had even passed, it turned into a lump of black charcoal by evening.
The culprit even eagerly asked him how he roasted it, whether he had improved, and if it was delicious.
Once again, an innocent and harmless expression forced the anger in his throat back down.
He endured. Ying just didn’t know he wanted to keep it alive. He also had himself to blame for forgetting to tell him when he returned.
But then there was the time before the time before last! He didn’t sleep in the middle of the night, constantly squeezing his tail, making it numb and itchy. He was sleeping soundly but was tossed awake by him, and then he couldn’t fall back asleep. The person who tormented him awake slept like a dead pig; no matter how much he poked him, he wouldn’t wake up. Just like that, he spent a sleepless night, sporting two large dark circles under his eyes, while that idiot woke up at dawn, bursting with energy.
And the time before the time before the time before last, he insisted on sleeping with his arms around him. Such a big lump pressed down on his hair. When he rolled over in the middle of the night, the pain woke him up. The next day, he found several of his hairs broken.
And the time before… before…
The trivial matters of the past played out in Yu She’s mind at this moment. His anger surged, the accumulated grievances of a long time finally erupting completely this time.
If he endured it any longer, he would suffer internal injuries. He couldn’t endure it anymore!
Ying felt Yu She’s “infatuated” gaze staring at him, spat out the water in his mouth, and smiled at the female somewhat ingratiatingly.
Waking up this morning and seeing the bruises on the female’s body, he felt a tiny bit of guilt in his heart, feeling that he had indeed gone a bit overboard yesterday.
Although he knew he was wrong, he still wanted to do it, even wanting to go a bit further, wanting to cover his entire body with marks he left behind, wanting to… bully him even harder.
Especially his red, swollen lips, which gave him a strange urge. He had also only just reached adulthood recently and didn’t know much about this aspect, being quite ignorant…
However… the female was truly beautiful.
He smiled even more cheerfully at Yu She.
Yu She: Hardened. My fists have hardened. I want to throw two punches at his cheeky face.
As he thought this in his mind, Yu She indeed actually did it.
The morning air in the primeval forest was exceptionally fresh. Sunlight shone on the earth, pink petals fluttered down from time to time, and the babbling stream flowed nearby. Everything was so beautiful… only Yu She… wasn’t doing too well.
He didn’t use all his strength for this punch, but he still used eighty percent. Yet how come that silly thing was smiling and standing perfectly still, and even grabbed his fist and kissed it?
Powerless. Full of powerlessness.
He couldn’t win in a fight either. What else could he do? He could only crush him mentally and ignore him consciously—commonly known as the silent treatment.
So, Yu She initiated the “out of sight, out of mind” mode, acting completely as if this person didn’t exist.
When Ying spoke to him, he ignored him, only keeping his head down and drawing blueprints. When Ying acted intimate and got handsy with him, although he wanted to resist, resistance was futile, so he could only pretend he couldn’t feel it. When Ying roasted meat for him… well, he couldn’t ignore this; he still had to eat. As the saying goes, man is iron and food is steel; you can only continue fighting the idiot when you’re full.
A few days passed like this. The thick-skulled Ying finally realized he was angry and became much more cautious in his actions, acting ingratiatingly towards Yu She. However, the female still ignored him.
Ying also grew worried. How could he coax the female to make things go back to how they were before?
Looking at the several wooden boards laid out in front of him, Yu She felt a spontaneous sense of accomplishment. He had finally finished drawing the blueprints. However, he had only learned a rough outline superficially; he didn’t know if there were any issues with the design.
He hesitated for a long time but still didn’t dare to start construction directly. He decided to make a simple model first to see if it would work. Yu She subconsciously wanted to tell Ying to chop some wood, but as the words reached his lips, he suddenly remembered they were still in a cold war.
Actually, after Ying carefully tried to please him these past few days, he wasn’t that angry anymore. But recently, Ying had actually been ignoring him too! He would sneak out for half a day every day. His hunting was usually very fast; what on earth was he doing dawdling outside for so long?
Could there be something outside that he couldn’t bear to part with? Speaking of which, he was also just picked up and raised by him. Could it be he picked up another snake or a bear?
Thinking that this was highly likely, his heart felt an unspeakable sourness.
Amidst Yu She’s suspicion, a few more days passed. The time Ying spent outside grew longer and longer, and Yu She’s heart grew colder and colder. But he didn’t want to take the initiative to speak to him, as if he had lost.
This stalemate of mutually ignoring each other was finally broken one day.
On this day, Ying ran out again after dinner. Yu She chewed on his usually favorite pheasant meat, but it tasted like ashes in his mouth.
After Ying left, he lost his appetite, his chest feeling stifled.
He didn’t force himself. He threw away the remaining meat, put out the fire, cleaned up the branches, and went back to the tree hollow. He had no mood to build the house model. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t get to live in it.
The more he thought about it, the more wronged he felt. Just because he was disobedient and ignored him for a few days, he went and raised something else outside.
The summer midnight was sweltering, but he felt freezing cold.
It was already late at night, and everything was silent. Yu She was alone in the tree hollow; it was so dark he felt a bit scared. Ying still hadn’t returned. By this time, he was probably hugging someone else and sleeping soundly. That someone was definitely very obedient and wouldn’t hit him with a tail like he always did, or tell him to stay away because he was too hot.
The two of them probably met during one of Ying’s hunts, occasionally seeing each other outside, and then secretly developing feelings. Coupled with his own overly cold attitude towards him, and that person being tender as water towards him, it exactly suited his wishes, so he just ran straight over there.
A severe agonizing pain twisted his chest, and an indescribable emotion spread throughout his body, so sour it made him want to cry.
He sniffled and held back the tears in his eyes.
“You are not allowed to cry, Yu She. If he’s gone, he’s gone. If he ran off with someone else, he ran off. It’s not like you can’t live on your own.”
Although his mouth said this, cold liquid snaked down and hit his chest.
“Wuu wuu wuu, this scumbag eagle. Didn’t they say eagles are single-minded towards their partners? A few days ago he was dying for me, and after such a short time, he doesn’t want me after meeting someone new. Wuu wuu wuu, the popular science videos are all lies.”
Hugging himself, he finally couldn’t suppress it anymore and started crying loudly. The grievances and negligence of these past few days made him unable to hold on any longer.
He started regretting. Why was he so fierce to Ying? If his words had been a bit softer, when Ying coaxed him, it would have been so nice to just use the stepping stone to make up. Ying wouldn’t have been lured away by some other demon; he would still be right beside him, hugging him to sleep.
Actually, he wasn’t that hot either, having his tail squeezed was quite comfortable, having his hair pressed down wasn’t that serious, and toothbrushes could always be remade. But how was he going to get back the Ying who was obedient to his every command?
People always say you only know to cherish something after you’ve lost it. Only at this moment did he realize how important Ying was to him.
It was so painful. He couldn’t sleep, his whole body felt uncomfortable, and he didn’t want to do anything.
What kind of mood was this? he wondered. A strange vocabulary suddenly popped into his mind—lovelorn.
Yu She raised his hand and stroked his thin chest. Did he… fall in love with Ying?
He couldn’t sleep anyway, so he simply crawled out of the tree hollow. Leaning against the tree trunk and hugging his tail, he sat on a very high branch, gazing into the pitch-black forest, thinking about this question. Everything that flashed through his mind was every little bit of Ying treating him well.
He probably did like him. Otherwise, whenever he thought of Ying’s world without him, living with someone else from now on, treating someone else the way he used to treat him, his heart would ache and twist sourly.
He ended up staying awake all night. When the sun rose, he decided to have a good talk with Ying. He would say everything he wanted to say, tell him his feelings, although he probably didn’t need it anymore.
At the very least, he needed to get a definite answer from Ying’s mouth. If he really wanted to live with another beastman, he would pack his things and stay far away from them.
However, he didn’t have much to pack either. Only a toothbrush, a cup engraved with Ying’s beast form, and a few wooden boards drawn with their house.
He carved that cup the last time they moved. Later, when he returned to the modern world and came back, he found the cup missing. He asked Ying if he had seen it. As a result, the silly eagle flew out to look for a whole morning and finally found it by the river where they bathed last time.
When he saw himself carved on it, he couldn’t bear to put it down. He would always use the cup to drink water, forcing himself to drink three or four times more water than usual.
Yu She couldn’t help but smile, but then he thought that Ying was already someone else’s. His eyes stung, and two more teardrops rolled down.
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