The next day, sunlight streamed into the bedroom, shifting from pale blue to soft gold as it quietly washed over the peaceful sleeping face on the bed.
After some time, there was finally a stir from beneath the fluffy cloud-like covers. The thick eyelashes, bathed in the bright light, trembled lightly. The person who had slept until he naturally woke still had sleepy eyes and hadn’t opened them yet, but his pale fingertips had already reached toward the familiar spot to grope for his phone.
…That was just young human instinct.
But his fingertips met only the soft, warm expanse of the bed.
Yu Bai, who had been lingering groggily in the remnants of his dream, finally blinked his eyes open in surprise, fully awake now.
Where was his phone?
His light brown eyes gazed in confusion at the bedroom around him. He zoned out for a few seconds as his mind gradually cleared, and he remembered where he was.
This was Uncle Zhang’s guest room. The bed was bigger than the one at his own place, and the furnishings were all different.
He’d woken up the same way yesterday morning, unable to find his phone in its usual spot.
With that in mind, Yu Bai instinctively glanced toward the bedside table. He rolled over slowly inside the covers and shifted toward it.
Sure enough, there it was under that pristine white pillow.
It was the fifth pillow—the extra one beyond the standard four on a double bed.
He had already guessed where this pillow had come from.
But yesterday had been so eventful that from the moment Yu Bai woke up, he hadn’t had a chance to return it.
So the extra pillow was still in his room.
This time, it was he himself who had shoved the phone under it in his sleep because it was buzzing too much.
Or… had it been Xie Wufang covering up the phone he’d forgotten to silence again?
Yu Bai didn’t know.
He lay on his side in the nest of blankets, his gaze unfocused as it wandered through the pale blue air of the room. He rubbed his head and zoned out for a bit, waiting for his pre-sleep memories to surface.
But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t remember when he’d gone to bed last night.
He had no recollection of what he’d done before sleeping, either.
His head ached faintly—the familiar discomfort of a hangover after a long time without one.
…Damn, he’d gotten drunk!
The young man with his hair all messed up from sleep immediately looked annoyed. He flipped over, burying himself in the soft pillow, his mood on the verge of collapse.
Getting blackout drunk alone would have been one thing, but this was at someone else’s house—and last night, the restaurant had been packed with familiar faces and strangers alike…
Even as he racked his brain now, his last clear memory was of his conversation with Zhang Yunjiang, about the origin of the name Corgi Zhang Wei.
Yu Bai remembered telling the old man, in a complicated frame of mind, that he was a particularly good father. Then, as the old man’s gaze grew wistful, they had both downed the rich, slightly bitter hot wine.
That part of the memory was already fuzzy and muddled. Everything after was a complete blank.
Commonly known as blacking out.
…He hadn’t done anything weird after getting drunk, had he?
There had been so many people at the restaurant last night!
The person with his face mashed into the pillow grew more and more worried the longer he thought about it. He pulled the covers up over his head and rolled around in the fluffy mound of bedding.
The last time Yu Bai had blacked out from drinking was at his university farewell party before graduation. When he woke up the next day, his memory cut off right after taking the second beer can.
He hadn’t thought much of it at first. But afterward, one classmate after another from that party came to confess to him.
Not just the opposite-sex classmates he’d considered ordinary friends, but even the same-sex roommate from the top bunk.
It had nearly made the perpetually unflappable Yu Bai curse out loud on the spot.
He’d always thought of them as dorm brothers. Their bond wasn’t super tight, but they got along fine day-to-day.
Why had four years of brotherhood turned into sudden confessions after one night of drinking??
And he didn’t even like guys!
Well, more precisely, he didn’t like guys—or girls, for that matter. He wasn’t exactly the standard straight guy.
Compared to Yan Jing, who was always eager to hit on girls at the dance academy, Yu Bai really didn’t seem straight. He didn’t even have a single photo of a beautiful woman saved in his phone gallery.
He had no particular interest in the opposite sex, nor in the same sex. He simply never thought about dating at all.
Classmates who knew him well would occasionally tease that he seemed asexual.
In any case, Yu Bai had been stunned by the string of confessions back then. Unable to make sense of it, he’d even wondered if he’d said something stupid while drunk and asked Yan Jing about it.
But Yan Jing insisted nothing was wrong—it had just been normal chatting, and the party atmosphere had been great.
It sounded perfectly ordinary.
Yu Bai had always vaguely felt something was off, but since he couldn’t get a straight answer, he’d let it drop.
He rarely drank proactively anyway, and certainly never got drunk again.
…Until last night.
It was all Uncle Yuan’s fault for suggesting yellow wine!
He had wanted hot chocolate!!
The person under the covers rolled around silently. After thinking for ages, his mind was still blank. He had no idea what had happened between the end of that conversation about Zhang Wei and when he’d gone to bed.
He remembered nothing from before sleep—only that it had been a good night’s rest.
As if he’d had a long, beautiful dream filled with bright, radiant things. Even though the details had faded upon waking, he still faintly sensed it had been a golden dream.
In that dream brimming with brilliant golden light, there seemed to be a very familiar voice calling his name.
The voice from the dream had faded, but that gentle, distant aura lingered deep in his heart.
So after rolling around in annoyance for a while, the person strangely calmed down. He reached for his phone again and decided to ask Yan Jing.
Yan Jing had shown up at the restaurant last night anyway. If he’d made a fool of himself, Yan Jing would definitely know.
The screen lit up, piled high with unread messages. As his fingertip swiped casually, a flash of intense disbelief bloomed in his pale eyes.
Then the person who had been lingering in bed suddenly threw off the covers, clutched his phone, and scrambled out of bed. He dashed to the window almost impatiently and yanked open the thin gauze curtains.
Whoosh.
Snowflakes danced wildly into view in his clear, surprised eyes.
Outside the window stretched a beautiful courtyard where snow blanketed the lush trees, turning the whole world into a fairy-tale wonderland.
It was snowing.
Skystar City, which almost never saw snow, had suddenly been blanketed overnight.
Fine snow had fallen across all of Skystar.
After the hurried footsteps echoed in the bedroom, steady footfalls gradually sounded from the living room beyond the open door.
Yu Bai heard that familiar tread and turned his bright, sparkling gaze toward it. His words brimmed with overflowing excitement: “Look, it’s snowing outside!”
The young man, freshly awake, stood by the bright window, the pure white snow swirling lightly behind him and illuminating his nearly translucent light brown hair.
His eyes shone so brightly, like the innocent child from many years ago who would lean on the windowsill making wishes to the winter sky—or like someone who had waited an incredibly long time for this snow that had come years late.
As their eyes met, snowflakes fell across the serene gray-blue lake as well.
The man who had followed the sound nodded lightly in acknowledgment. “It’s snowing.”
The snow had drifted down slowly all night and showed no sign of stopping. The world outside was nearly cloaked in silver, everything piled high with white. From afar, Yu Bai could already make out a little snowman someone had casually piled up in the rustic long corridor.
“Has it been snowing all night? I saw Yan Jing messaged me about it last night, and he sent a bunch more this morning telling me to come out and have a snowball fight.”
Yu Bai chattered happily to Xie Wufang, his roommate for the moment, about the snow. But as soon as the words left his mouth, he realized his slip and hurriedly changed the subject: “Ahem, I think I got drunk yesterday. I don’t remember the snow at all…”
He’d accidentally mentioned someone else again.
Someone Xie Wufang, in his sick state, strongly rejected.
As Yu Bai quickly corrected himself, he instinctively checked the other man’s reaction.
Those heterochromatic eyes, so oppressive when he was unwell, didn’t flash with the undisguised disgust from yesterday.
They remained that serene, beautiful gray-blue lake, only faintly rippling now.
The man standing in the bedroom doorway spoke softly: “Yes, the snow fell all night.”
Yu Bai paused, suddenly forgetting the snow outside as he seriously studied Xie Wufang’s appearance.
The other man’s complexion didn’t seem as pallid and weak as yesterday.
“Are you feeling better?” Yu Bai asked immediately.
“Mm,” Xie Wufang replied. “I’ll be fully recovered soon.”
Recovered enough to lock his out-of-control instincts back in their cage once more.
Yu Bai said from the heart, “Really? That’s great.”
No wonder Xie Wufang hadn’t shown any obvious strange emotions when he’d mentioned Yan Jing.
His illness was almost better.
The abnormal state came to an end as well.
Thus, Yu Bai increasingly felt that today was a good day. A beautiful snowy scene stretched out beyond the window, and the patient inside the room was on the verge of full recovery.
His mood brightened considerably as a result. Even the blackout from his drunken night no longer weighed on him so heavily. He decided to simply ask Xie Wufang, who was right there in front of him.
“It wasn’t just the snow—I have no memory of anything else,” he said, a touch of uncertainty in his voice. “I didn’t cause any trouble after getting drunk, did I?”
“No,” Xie Wufang replied. “We left the restaurant together not long after you got drunk.”
Hearing this, Yu Bai let out a breath of relief.
At least he’d only embarrassed himself in front of Xie Wufang.
That was far better than making a drunken fool of himself in front of a crowd.
He asked again, “Did I give you any trouble, though? I have no idea what I’m like when I drink. Am I super annoying? Last night must have been a real hassle for you—”
Before Yu Bai could finish, Xie Wufang cut in. “It wasn’t a hassle.”
“After you got drunk,” he paused for a beat, “you were quite good.”
Yu Bai blinked, momentarily stunned.
He probably hadn’t done anything outrageous while drunk, then.
Every elder or friend who’d seen him in that state had said more or less the same thing: nothing much, he was fine.
So there was no real need to worry about it.
He must have just passed out and fallen straight asleep.
With that thought, Yu Bai fully relaxed. He headed straight for the door. “In that case, I’ll go wash my face and brush my teeth. I’ve slept so long—I’m starving.”
The young man, still in his pajamas, stepped out of the bedroom and brushed past the man standing in the doorway.
In that fleeting moment, a soft question sounded in his ear.
“There’s iced chocolate in the fridge,” Xie Wufang said suddenly. “Would you like some?”
Iced chocolate?
Surprised but responding on instinct, Yu Bai called back, “Sure, just wait till I finish brushing my teeth.”
A vast, snowy expanse outside under a white sky. A warm, cozy house within. And to top it off, a cup of rich, aromatic chocolate.
It sounded like pure bliss.
But where had the iced chocolate come from?
Had he taken the unfinished hot chocolate from the restaurant last night and frozen it?
Standing before the mirror, Yu Bai used his palm to dab water over his hair, taming the wild, tousled mess as he pondered curiously.
What struck him even more was how naturally that everyday exchange had flowed from Xie Wufang’s lips. It stirred an indescribable, wondrous feeling in his chest.
Xie Wufang no longer seemed like some distant and aloof divinity.
He felt more like an ordinary human, right there within arm’s reach.
Someone with whom he could share the little trivialities of daily life.
No longer was it just Yu Bai unilaterally guiding Him through the wonders of the mortal world.
As Yu Bai squeezed toothpaste onto his brush, the corner of his eye caught the flurry of snow still falling beyond the bathroom window.
…What a truly special day.
Without realizing it, he’d wandered over to the window to brush his teeth. He gazed out at the snow with a look of quiet longing.
A few moments later, the man who had just gently set a cup brimming with iced chocolate on the dining table heard a somewhat muffled voice from nearby. He turned his gaze that way.
A brown-haired head poked out from the bathroom door, complete with a silly tuft of hair sticking straight up. Bright eyes fixed on him, a toothbrush clutched in hand, and a dab of white foam at the corner of the mouth.
“Xie Wufang,” he called softly, his voice light yet clear. “Do you want to build a snowman?”
