Chapter 29: Crushing Pressure Part 3

He was maturely protective.

After dinner, Chi Mo saw them off. He spoke his first cold words of the night to his biological parents: “Don’t come again. This isn’t your home. You have no right to come and go as you please.”

At the entryway, only the three of them were there. As Chi Mo said this, his eyes held bone-chilling malice—a clear threat: come again, and I’ll kill you.

In the latter half of the night, Li Ran slept soundly, completely unaware that someone gently pushed open his bedroom door from outside. Without turning on the light, Chi Mo stepped silently into the darkness and stood at the bedside.

He stared motionless down at the person sleeping on the bed, his gaze like that of a demon greedily craving warmth.

Then, he squatted down and gently rubbed Li Ran’s lips with his thumb. At first, it was just simple touching, like drinking poison to quench thirst. But once his thumb felt the warmth, it ignited a fierce blaze of intense desire.

His thumb pressed down hard.

Only when Li Ran’s lips shifted from a healthy natural pink to a ravaged, bruised crimson did Chi Mo stop. Before things spiraled further out of control, he turned and fled.

In the middle of the night, Chi Mo called his psychologist. “He’s really great.”

The psychologist bolted upright. Curses for this idiot patient disturbing his sleep were on the tip of his tongue, but he exclaimed in surprise instead. “So you’re willing not to hurt him? Confirming—is this real?”

Chi Mo frowned and corrected him. “I never hurt him.”

“Okay, okay. So you’re willing to stay away from his life? From now on, he’s him and you’re you? You won’t try to get to know him or enter his life?”

“No,” Chi Mo said. “I can’t let him go even more now.”

“…”

Chi Mo added, “I’ve known him for a while. He’s sleeping in my house right now.”

The psychologist cursed. “Chi Mo, you motherfucker! You haven’t come to the hospital for three months—I thought you were really busy. Turns out you were just lying! Fuck your grandpa!!!”

Chi Mo hung up and happily lay down to sleep.

On Sunday, Li Ran followed Chi Mo to the company.

Chi Mo worked, Li Ran memorized vocabulary—clear division of labor.

Besides subjects like math and physics that deserved to be struck by lightning, what Li Ran hated most was memorizing words. Whenever he heard others say they’d memorized dozens or hundreds in a day, he envied their memory. Every time he saw a shooting star, he wished for a brain with perfect recall.

But when he memorized words, he forgot the front ones by the back and the back ones by the front during review. Today he forgot yesterday, tomorrow he’d forget today—round and round, like trapped in a loop game. If any company needed a perpetual motion machine, they wouldn’t need to buy one; just hire Li Ran.

Like this, Li Ran honestly acted as a perpetual motion machine for dozens of days over the summer break and would continue into the school year.

Chi Mo had emphasized repeatedly that if he didn’t want to deal with English’s pesky past/present tenses and such, expanding vocabulary was the most straightforward, reliable way.

Li Ran remained skeptical.

Finally enduring through Sunday and escaping Chi Mo’s control, he returned to school. The first class was English. Senior year three had no buffer for adjusting to the new semester—it started at full intensity. As the irritable academic director put it: “What time is it? Stop dawdling! You can’t even catch hot shit! Senior year is practice for reincarnation! Buckle up!”

Then Li Ran oddly discovered that memorizing thirty words a day, forced and supervised by the ultra-controlling Chi Mo over the summer, had netted over a thousand.

He knew he forgot more than he retained, but when the English teacher explained the textbook, he actually recognized many words.

Seeing long sentences, he inexplicably felt that the “language sense” the teacher once mentioned was approaching him. It was a vague concept, but focusing hard, he stumbled through a translation.

Accurate or not, it was progress.

Later, the English teacher randomly called on Li Ran for an answer. Unlike before—whispering he didn’t know or standing there like an idiot—he carefully gave his response. Then he even checked: “…Is that right, teacher?”

The English teacher beamed. “Your homeroom teacher bragged in the office that you took summer classes—I didn’t believe it. You’re pretty smart. Mess around for two years, then study hard in senior year. Don’t waste time.”

At those words, the whole class glared at Li Ran with “traitor” eyes, grinding their teeth with malice.

This time, Li Ran got smart. With thirty seconds to dismissal, he bolted.

Qi Zhi even covered for him, blocking the back door with his body. “Hey, what’s wrong? Seeing my desk mate study hard breaks you all? Then study hard yourselves—I’ll be first, and I’ll teach you.”

Over time, Li Ran stopped caring about Qi Zhi’s unconventional orientation and respected him.

The world had all kinds of wonders; he was free to be himself.

Qi Zhi was good at reading people. Seeing Li Ran no longer resistant, he joked, “Good desk mate, a kiss?”

Predictably, Li Ran bristled in fear. “Get away.”

After a few times, it still bothered Li Ran—goosebumps rose on his arms. He told Chi Mo, not mentioning the kiss joke, figuring a traditional straight guy like Chi Mo couldn’t accept it.

Last time with Bai Qingqing and Li Ang, Chi Mo’s face darkened when he heard his mom call his dad gay. Qi Zhi had said even the words “gay” were taboo in the Chi family—unmentionable.

Li Ran only told Chi Mo that Qi Zhi kept joking with him lately. Chi Mo’s blunt advice: “Tell him to fuck off.”

The next day, Qi Zhi joked again about a desk-mate kiss. Li Ran mustered a serious, fierce tone: “Fuck off.”

Qi Zhi was shocked. “Damn, you even curse now?”

But he scrammed quick, not ruining Li Ran’s first cursing high, and praised him as awesome.

Before the first monthly exam in senior year, Li Ran studied hard at school. Weekends at home, he studied hard too.

Once more dragged by Chi Mo to the company to memorize words and do homework, Li Ran wanted to go downstairs to play. He glanced at Chi Mo’s current inhumanely cold side profile and thought, Damn, he’s really handsome…

He immediately scolded himself as crazy. What was hot about a guy’s hard edges?

Hua Xue Fan said she had candy; Li Ran wanted to go grab a couple.

But Chi Mo wouldn’t let him go.

He had to take the first monthly exam seriously for a good score.

The vague concept of a “good score” pressured Li Ran a lot.

Forced to study for months by Chi Mo, if he did well, fine—but failing would disappoint so much. Better to give up now; then if he failed, he’d have an excuse. And it wouldn’t relate to Chi Mo—it’d all be Li Ran’s fault for slacking.

Deep down, he never believed he could do well. He didn’t want to disappoint his bro.

So, was there any way to make Chi Mo too lazy to look at him right now and chase him away?

Then, for some inexplicable reason, Li Ran thought of how Qi Zhi had annoyed him by keep saying “give me a kiss, give me a kiss”… Could he do the same and annoy Chi Mo?

People really learned bad habits easily, but learning good ones was hard.

“Bro, I want to go downstairs.”

Chi Mo didn’t even glance over as he fixed a game bug. “What for?”

Li Ran slacked off and said, “My hand hurts. I don’t want to write anymore… Plus, I always did terribly on my first monthly exams.”

Chi Mo looked at him and waited for him to continue.

“I’ll definitely do badly this time too. I want to go out and play.” To achieve his goal of making Chi Mo blind to his presence and kick him out, Li Ran bravely voiced his refusal to study while stepping on a landmine in the most rebellious way. In his self-proclaimed cleverness, he added, “Bro, I’m telling the truth. Believe me… I’ll really do badly, so don’t have too high expectations for me.”

“If I score higher than my sophomore year final total on this monthly exam, I’ll kiss you right on the mouth!”

The words didn’t connect logically from front to back, but straight guys couldn’t stand hearing that kind of talk—Li Ran had experience.

With that, Li Ran started packing up his books.

He planned to bolt and felt pretty pleased with himself.

Chi Mo had originally felt sorry for him writing homework until his hand hurt and was about to let him go downstairs to play for half an hour before coming back up. But upon hearing that, he reached out with a large hand and grabbed the collar of the just-risen Li Ran, pressing him back down. Expressionless, he said, “Sit properly.”

Chi Mo transformed into the most inhumane capitalist, exploiting Li Ran. “Write properly. Study properly. I’m watching you the whole time.”