Chapter 32

When Mu Yicong said that, Qi Yang’s first reaction was simple: he knew that bastard was up to no good, just biding his time for Qi Yang to “repay” him.

A homosexual inviting a man to live with him—what was the difference between that and just writing his intentions on his face?

Qi Yang darkened his face and stayed silent. Mu Yicong waited for him, glanced at his expression, and curved his eyes like he had successfully teased a kid.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked Qi Yang deliberately.

“What are you thinking about?” Qi Yang stared out the car window, not looking at him.

“I’m thinking if the traffic’s bad, which small road I should take,” Mu Yicong said.

Qi Yang’s expression softened a bit. For a moment, he felt like he was judging others by his own petty standards, but then he told himself again that this Mu Yicong couldn’t be taken lightly.

The drive to the destination really didn’t amount to anything.

The roads before New Year were indeed congested everywhere. Mu Yicong had planned the route in advance. The original seven- or eight-hour drive didn’t get delayed too much. They took turns driving, leaving at ten in the morning, and arrived at the place by eight in the evening.

Qi Yang got out of the car and looked at the detached little villa in front of him, pressing his lips together slightly.

“Come on in.” Mu Yicong carried Qi Yang’s luggage bag and opened the door to walk in, explaining to him, “The family bought it and put it under my name. I come here occasionally for vacations. It hasn’t been used for many years. I contacted a cleaner in advance to tidy up.”

Qi Yang stopped at the villa’s entrance and tugged at his own bag strap.

“You stay here,” he said to Mu Yicong. “I’ll go find a place outside.”

“What’s wrong?” Mu Yicong looked at him. “Afraid I’ll really do something to you?”

“Are you ever going to drop it?” Qi Yang couldn’t understand how this guy could just open his mouth and say things like that. Truly, what goes around comes around.

“This place is close to the doctor’s home.” Mu Yicong brushed his hand aside and walked straight into the house. “If you go find somewhere else now, I’ll have to come pick you up specially tomorrow.”

“We’ve been tired all day. Don’t make trouble.”

With things put that way, Qi Yang would feel like he was being overly dramatic if he didn’t accept the favor.

But owing someone a favor was just uncomfortable. Hearing the door close behind him, Qi Yang stood straight in place, surveying the interior of the villa, and started thinking about how to sleep tonight.

Mu Yicong seemed to have a perfect grasp of his psychological movements.

He checked the cleanliness of the house, turned on all the lights, and directly led Qi Yang to the second floor. Pushing open a door, he said, “You’ll stay here tonight.”

This room was probably the master bedroom of the villa—spacious, clean, with its own bathroom and a large scenic balcony. The bed sheets and blankets were also newly changed.

Qi Yang went in, took a look around, pulled the sliding door and curtains of the balcony shut, and turned around. Mu Yicong was leaning against the doorframe, watching him.

“And you?” Qi Yang asked.

He was asking where Mu Yicong would sleep tonight, but Mu Yicong didn’t answer directly.

“I’m hungry.” Mu Yicong lifted his wrist to check the time and said to Qi Yang, “Do you want to go out to eat, or order in?”

Qi Yang had been sitting in the car all day and didn’t want to move anymore.

The two discussed it and decided to eat at home.

After Qi Yang took a shower to relieve his fatigue and came downstairs, dinner had just arrived, laid out on half the table.

Mu Yicong had also showered in the bathroom downstairs, put on a bathrobe, and was selecting wine in front of the wine cabinet.

Qi Yang had also seen a bathrobe in the master bedroom’s bathroom, but he didn’t put it on. He changed into the sleepwear he had brought with him.

—Bathrobes, Qi Yang always thought, were flashy and impractical. They were inconvenient to wear, and if you moved too much, they’d expose your chest.

Earlier, when Liu Dameng accompanied him on a business trip and stayed at a hotel, he wore one once. The bathrobe belt was tied around his belly, which was starting to show signs of a gut, and the round of his navel was exposed after just two steps—it was an eyesore.

But the way Mu Yicong looked, relaxed and natural, gave a completely different visual effect from Liu Dameng wearing one.

Mu Yicong carried an inherent nobility. Qi Yang had felt that even in school, though he never liked to admit it.

The same shirt, when worn by someone their age, made them look like a waiter, but on Mu Yicong, it looked tall, lean, and refreshing. The school uniform was a real test of figure and temperament. Even the suit and coat from the class reunion—similar styles, but when Ren Wei put them on, he looked like an emcee, while Mu Yicong could pass for a supermodel.

Qi Yang watched Mu Yicong walk back to the dining table, silently comparing the man before him to the memory of that night when he stayed at Mu Yicong’s home—the still-developing teenage figure.

A clothes hanger with long legs and a slender waist—even wearing a bathrobe like that didn’t come off as lecherous.

But in this setting, it still somehow seemed like he was flaunting himself.

Noticing Qi Yang’s gaze, Mu Yicong raised his wine glass and explained, “I know you don’t drink, so I didn’t get you any. Just drink water.”

“Mm.” Qi Yang withdrew his gaze, didn’t bother with pleasantries, picked up his chopsticks, and started eating.

After filling his stomach, he leaned back in his chair, popped a cigarette out of the pack, squinted, and put it in his mouth.

Mu Yicong watched him and took a sip of wine.

“Won’t Qi Xing be unsettled without you at home?” he asked Qi Yang.

“Yeah.” Qi Yang could imagine Qi Xing pacing around the house.

Qi Xing had her own sense of time. Her day began when Qi Yang left for work and ended when he came home, with a margin of error no more than three hours.

The more the kid grew, the more she couldn’t leave him. Zou Meizhu could be gone all night, and Qi Xing wouldn’t look for her.

But if Qi Yang wasn’t home when he was supposed to be, she’d get anxious.

“She’ll call in a bit,” Qi Yang said, checking the time and placing his phone on the edge of the table, waiting. “It’s better now. Before, she was strict about the time. If she didn’t see me when she expected to, she’d start yelling.”

“Ever get annoyed?” Mu Yicong asked again.

“Annoyed.” Qi Yang tilted his head back against the chair, turned his neck to meet Mu Yicong’s eyes, and gave a small smile.

“Annoyed even when she was little. She’d wet her pants all the time, wouldn’t talk when she was supposed to. No one knew what was going on in her head.”

“But being annoyed doesn’t change anything.” He raised his arm and tapped the ash into the takeout container lid. “I accepted it.”

In the spacious and empty villa dining room, one with a cigarette, the other with wine, they talked about Qi Xing. Maybe because they were both a bit tired, it was the first time the atmosphere had been so harmonious when they were alone.

Mu Yicong looked at Qi Yang for a long time—so long that Qi Yang’s senses sharpened again.

“What are you looking at?” He met Mu Yicong’s gaze and stared back.

“When you talk about Qi Xing, you talk more,” Mu Yicong said. “And you smile.”

Qi Yang stared at him for a moment, then dropped his eyelids again and took another drag.

“You talk more now,” he said, blowing a smoke ring at Mu Yicong. “You didn’t talk this much with me in school.”

“Which do you prefer?” Mu Yicong poured himself another glass of wine.

“What?” Qi Yang asked.

“Me,” Mu Yicong said.

Prefer?

Qi Yang sank into thought.

“Neither,” he answered unceremoniously.

The hair that Mu Yicong had brushed back was mostly dry. A couple of strands fell from the corners of his forehead, loosely covering part of his brows and eyes, as well as the indefinable something in his gaze when he looked at Qi Yang.

Qi Yang suddenly wanted to ask him again what exactly he liked about him. Not with emotion, not with irritation or mockery—just genuine curiosity.

Human capacity for acceptance really was immeasurable.

He silently thought, feeling the question spinning in his throat.

Clearly, it hadn’t been that long, and he could already calmly accept that he had been liked by a man.

But before he could ask, Mu Yicong spoke up, admitting frankly, “I liked the you from before.”

This wasn’t the first time Mu Yicong had expressed it, but hearing it today, Qi Yang still slowed his smoking motion for a moment.

He lowered his head and patted the ash off his leg, a strange irritation rising in his heart.

“Who asked you?” When he looked up again, there was a sting in his eyes.

Just then, the WeChat video ringtone rang. It was indeed Zou Meizhu.

Qi Yang answered the video, and on the screen popped Qi Xing’s eyes, so close up that it startled Qi Yang.

“Hold it further away,” he said, amused, reminding Qi Xing. “How can you see your brother with it that close?”

When Qi Xing saw Qi Yang’s face, her gaze started to drift again, and she said nothing.

Zou Meizhu took the phone and started asking Qi Yang how he was, if everything was going smoothly, if he had eaten.

While mother and son video-called, Mu Yicong didn’t say a word, just watched quietly from the side.

Qi Yang hesitated for a moment, then got up and sat down next to Mu Yicong, turning the camera to face both of them. “This is my… friend. He’s the one who helped me out on this trip.”

“Oh, such a handsome guy.” Zou Meizhu hadn’t expected an outsider. She was taken aback for a second, then quickly started greeting Mu Yicong. “You’re Yangyang’s friend? Thank you so much!”

“You’re too kind,” Mu Yicong replied politely.

As the two adults chatted on the video, Qi Xing’s eyes appeared at the edge of the screen again. She looked at Mu Yicong for a few seconds, then blinked.

“She remembers you,” Qi Yang said.

Mu Yicong smiled gently and called out Qi Xing’s name. Qi Xing didn’t respond, just turned her eyes away again.

The video call didn’t last long. Zou Meizhu just wanted Qi Xing to see Qi Yang, otherwise she wouldn’t sleep.

As soon as the video ended, Qi Yang clutched his phone and was about to stand up. They had been too close when huddling together for the video; he wanted to sit back in his original spot.

But before his butt could leave the edge of the stool, Mu Yicong raised his hand and gripped his arm.

“Jealous?” he asked Qi Yang.

“What?” Qi Yang was completely lost. He couldn’t even match what Mu Yicong was asking. “Jealous of what? Why would I be jealous of you?”

“Of the you now,” Mu Yicong said, his gaze like a knife, cutting into Qi Yang’s reaction. “Of the you from before.”

Qi Yang stood frozen in place, remembering Mu Yicong’s words from before the video: “I liked the you from before.”

“You’re clearly curious about what I like about you, but every time I say I liked the you from before, you get mad at me.”

Mu Yicong’s palm on Qi Yang’s arm was dry and warm, with a force that was just enough to hold Qi Yang back, but also within the range that Qi Yang could easily shake off.

“Are you jealous of yourself, Qi Yang?”

Qi Yang should have found it ridiculous.

He told himself that.

He should laugh at Mu Yicong for being a peacock showing off, laugh at him for thinking he actually cared about that liking of his—whether it was real or fake, for reasons known or unknown.

But looking at Mu Yicong’s dark, unreadable eyes up close, feeling the warmth on his arm, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything.

In that few seconds of hesitation, Mu Yicong moved even closer.

“It’s true that I liked the you from before.”

Mu Yicong was almost pressing against Qi Yang’s forehead. His gaze and his breath, faintly laced with wine, swept over Qi Yang’s tight lips.

“And it’s also true that I want to sleep with the you now.”

Qi Yang couldn’t stand it when Mu Yicong said things like “I want to sleep with you” in that low voice.

The feeling from that night, when he had thought of Mu Yicong while releasing himself, surged back within him. His breath caught, and his entire back felt like boiling water had been poured over it, making him jerk his arm away.

Mu Yicong didn’t hold on. He remained at almost the same distance from Qi Yang and simply let go.

Qi Yang froze again.

“I’ll count to three,” Mu Yicong said. “One… three.”

When “three” landed, Mu Yicong pinched Qi Yang’s chin and, before he could get up, bit his lip.