When the scissors came in from the side of Qin Zui’s knee and were about to cut upward along his thigh, Qin Zui really couldn’t help but stop Jiang Chu again.
“You’re just going to cut straight up?” He frowned at Jiang Chu.
“What’s the matter?” Jiang Chu glanced at his own wrist, which Qin Zui was holding, not understanding why cutting pants was so damn difficult.
“Shouldn’t you cut from the outside?” Qin Zui had no idea how Jiang Chu could have the nerve to ask him “what’s the matter.” “Who the hell cuts pants by sticking the scissors up from the inner thigh?”
“Oh.” Jiang Chu’s gaze followed the scissors’ teeth in a circle around Qin Zui’s sensitive area and he finally got his concern. He started laughing and couldn’t stop.
Qin Zui just looked at him helplessly.
“I wasn’t going to go all the way up. This hand position is just easier.” Jiang Chu chuckled, moving the scissors, and cut a three-inch slit along the seam of Qin Zui’s pants.
Then he tossed the scissors aside and, with a sharp riiiip, tore the fabric. Before Qin Zui could even process the slightly suggestive sound, he felt his whole leg suddenly freed from the pants.
Looking down, he could see the edge of his boxers.
“You…” He pulled his shirt down further, but Jiang Chu was already reaching for his belt. Qin Zui quickly covered his hands, saying, “I’ll do it myself.”
Jiang Chu didn’t push it this time. It wasn’t like Qin Zui’s hands were broken.
He sat on the floor, propped up on one arm, waiting for Qin Zui to undo his belt so he could help him pull his pants off.
Because he was sitting in such a perfect spot, his gaze naturally landed on the area Qin Zui was covering. He stared at the bulge for a second, then immediately felt a mix of amusement and exasperation. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Qin Zui’s hands paused. He shot Jiang Chu a look and irritably threw his belt to the side. “I said I’d do it myself.”
“Fuck.” Jiang Chu turned his head, laughing, at a loss for words.
Fucking high schoolers were just too damn virile.
Getting a hard-on from having his wound treated was one thing, but even with a cast on his leg?
Jiang Chu thought about how he was in his teens, and he’d been restless enough, but he hadn’t been as bad as Qin Zui.
“Good thing it’s not your hip that’s dislocated,” Jiang Chu said, tugging at the pants leg on Qin Zui’s right leg to help him pull it off. “Otherwise, the nurse trying to help you with your pants would have to take a break just to call you a pervert.”
Qin Zui cooperated, pulling his leg back and resting it on the sofa edge. He looked at Jiang Chu but didn’t say anything.
Jiang Chu realized his mistake and laughed. “Right. It’d have to be a male doctor.”
Since he’d already been caught, Qin Zui didn’t bother hiding it anymore. He shook out the board shorts and pulled them on, standing on his good leg to pull them up. With a flat tone and a half-lidded gaze, he said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a doctor or a nurse.”
Jiang Chu was still sitting on the floor, and Qin Zui standing right in front of him like that was dangerously close to his face.
He suddenly remembered that afternoon in the study, the gif that had popped up right in his face when he opened the webpage. The skin at the back of his ears tightened.
“Huh?” He quickly stood up, holding Qin Zui’s hip to steady him, helping him get the casted leg through the shorts. “It only matters if you’re taking your pants off, is that it?”
Qin Zui looked at him, grabbed his crutch, and headed for the bathroom.
“You’re not gonna jerk off, are you…?” Jiang Chu thought Qin Zui was going to deal with his problem. Shocked and a little worried, he said, “You should do that in bed. If you fall again, my clothes aren’t even changed yet, I’d have to take you straight back to the hospital.”
Qin Zui really didn’t want to talk to him anymore. He didn’t even want to make a face. He stopped and just stared at Jiang Chu for a good few seconds before saying, “I have to take a piss.”
Jiang Chu made an “alright, alright, I get it” face and made a “be my guest” gesture with his hand.
Getting a cast put on didn’t really affect Qin Zui’s mobility much.
But it was still a pain. Crutches, no matter how good they were, weren’t as good as his own legs.
He’d been so focused on changing his pants that now that he was relaxing, his left ankle was starting to throb with a dull, pulsing pain. Standing on one leg in front of the toilet, he was about to pull down his waistband when he stumbled and had to brace himself against the wall.
He couldn’t even piss. It was a bit of a dull ache. He needed to take a minute.
Qin Zui leaned against the wall, staring at the row of weirdly shaped little aromatherapy bottles on the shelf, his mind still turning over Jiang Chu’s words.
It wasn’t about the male doctor or the female nurse, or taking the pants off or ripping them off.
None of that was the point.
The point was that the person involved didn’t know they were the point.
From the very first time he saw Jiang Chu, whether he was willing to admit it or not, Jiang Chu held an inexplicable attraction for him.
The word “Bro” was the same.
From the first time Jiang Chu pressed his fingers to his Adam’s apple and made him say it, that word had become like a strange little electric switch in his mind. Every time he thought of it, a tiny jolt of current would run through him.
Before, he could still fool himself into thinking it was just because Jiang Chu’s body and face fit his aesthetic perfectly.
He’d even gone from being frustrated and helpless about this fact to gradually accepting it and being at peace with it.
But compared to realizing that he reacted to Jiang Chu, the superimposed effect that the title “Bro” produced—an emotional, or perhaps, a pleasurable effect—felt even more bewildering.
Having feelings for Jiang Chu was a matter of sexual orientation. Having feelings for the word “Bro” felt more like some kind of secret kink.
So a few days ago, when Jiang Chu teased him to say it, Qin Zui hadn’t really not wanted to. He’d wanted to suppress this feeling that made his spine tingle just thinking about it.
And today, Jiang Chu had finally found a chance to make up for it, forcing him to say “Bro” several times.
Then blowing smoke at him, helping him pull off his pants… it was like he was practically egging him on to get hard.
Even without all that, at noon in the hospital, when Jiang Chu had pushed open the door of the treatment room, carrying the chill of autumn, frowning, that look in his eyes, that expression—a calm laced with concern—had already struck Qin Zui as… sexy.
Yeah, that was the word.
Qin Zui recalled that scene, and the corners of his mouth still wanted to lift.
A warm kind of sexy.
So warm he couldn’t stop replaying it in his mind, so warm it made him want to do something.
Qin Zui knew this was wrong. Wrong on every level.
He nudged the row of weirdly shaped little aromatherapy bottles on the shelf. Another wave of dull ache shot through him, and he closed his eyes tiredly.
But he couldn’t control it.
When he came out of the bathroom, Jiang Chu was on the balcony, on the phone.
From his few words and his tone, Qin Zui could tell the person on the other end was Qin Shuman.
He went to the sofa, picked up his own phone, and glanced at it.
No missed calls.
Not even a text message.
He put the phone back, grabbed his crutch, and hobbled to the kitchen to see about making some food.
They’d been going at it since ten-something and hadn’t eaten yet. Jiang Chu probably hadn’t had time to, either.
“Yeah, he got a cast. A ligament too, but… from what the doctor said, it shouldn’t be too serious. At least it’s not broken.” Jiang Chu was telling Qin Shuman about Qin Zui’s condition. He heard Qin Zui come out and glanced back.
“Yeah, I understand.” Qin Shuman had been explaining what she was busy with when Hai Dapang called her. From what Jiang Chu could gather, she’d been busy accompanying Jiang Liantian at a meeting.
“I’m sorry, Little Chu, for troubling you again.” Qin Shuman’s tone was apologetic.
“It’s no trouble for me. I was just eating lunch at the time anyway. I wasn’t in a meeting.” Jiang Chu said.
As soon as he said this, the breathing on the other end of the line completely stopped. Qin Shuman was silent for a long time.
Jiang Chu sighed silently to himself. He usually didn’t speak so bluntly, especially not to his father’s current wife.
From the beginning, when they decided to send Qin Zui to him, to the birthday party incident, Jiang Chu felt his attitude had been pretty decent. He’d left them enough face and kept things dignified.
But this time, maybe because he really felt for Qin Zui, he was genuinely a bit pissed off at Qin Shuman’s attitude.
Jiang Chu could kind of understand her dilemma. In the end, she just couldn’t let go.
On one hand, Qin Shuman felt she still had a maternal duty to Qin Zui, or at least an instinct towards her child. On the other hand, her own values and the morality she imposed on herself were telling her to accept Qin Zui.
But she really couldn’t bring herself to do it.
This led to her attitude towards Qin Zui being a complex layered upon a complex.
Jiang Chu sometimes even felt that Qin Shuman didn’t despise Qin Zui, or “hate” him. The main emotion she felt for him seemed more like “fear”.
Fear that seeing Qin Zui would remind her of those past days.
Fear that she would never be able to escape the past because of Qin Zui.
And more than anything, fear that if she truly ignored Qin Zui, her own conscience wouldn’t be able to handle it.
It was truly complicated. He could understand the pain Qin Shuman had suffered in the past. If the needle hadn’t pricked him, he had no right to judge how she should act.
If Qin Shuman had completely rejected Qin Zui, hadn’t wanted to see him, hadn’t wanted any further contact with her son, that would have been understandable.
The problem was that she wasn’t that decisive. If, during that first call from the train station, she had just told Qin Zui not to come, maybe none of this would have happened.
She always gave Qin Zui a little hope, then took the next step to make the distance between them even more obvious. Jiang Chu couldn’t imagine how Qin Zui felt. Putting himself in Qin Zui’s shoes, he just felt annoyed.
“Sorry. What I meant was, if it’s really inconvenient for you to come, but you do want to know how he’s doing, then just giving him a call or sending him a text would be much more direct than asking me.”
Jiang Chu rubbed his brow, softening his tone.
“If you just want to ease your own conscience, to create the appearance of having ‘checked on him,’ even though I don’t think it means much, I can play along. I can tell you how he’s doing every day.”
After he finished, Qin Shuman remained silent on the other end. Jiang Chu didn’t wait. He simply said his goodbyes and politely hung up.
Qin Zui was doing something in the kitchen. The fridge door kept opening and closing.
Jiang Chu went over to peek in. He saw Qin Zui taking out ingredients, one hand holding the fridge door, the other only able to grab one thing at a time. He was pivoting around on his good leg like it was a center point. The basin was already filled with water, and a clay pot full of rice was soaking in it.
“Hey.” Jiang Chu quickly went over to support him, his arm naturally looping around Qin Zui’s waist.
“Have you gotten taller again?” He suddenly realized he was looking at Qin Zui level. Last month, he didn’t remember this being his perspective. “Go lie down. I’ll cook today.”
“Her call?” Qin Zui didn’t move. He dropped a small handful of dried shrimp into the basin.
“Yeah.” Jiang Chu hesitated for a second about whether to be honest with Qin Zui about his mother’s attitude today, but he decided to hold back half of it. “She wanted to come see you. She couldn’t get away just now. She sounded pretty worried.”
Qin Zui didn’t say anything. He knew Jiang Chu was covering for Qin Shuman. His purpose was to make him feel better.
Jiang Chu was good.
He was a good person, and he treated him well.
“Alright, stop messing around. I have to stand here and hold you up. I support both of you that way. What a bargain.” Jiang Chu guided Qin Zui out by the waist.
“Do you even know how to cook?” Qin Zui shook the water off his hands.
“Cook what?” Jiang Chu finally thought to ask.
“Clay pot rice.” Qin Zui said.
“I actually don’t…” Jiang Chu said, turning his head to look at the pot.
When he turned his head, his hairline and temple swept right past Qin Zui’s face.
Qin Zui hadn’t meant to move, didn’t think he had moved, even though Jiang Chu’s arm around his waist, the careful way he was holding him close to his side, was stirring waves of emotion in his chest.
But Jiang Chu quickly covered his temple and ear and spun around to stare at him. “Did you just nuzzle me?”
“I nuzzled you?” Qin Zui froze.
“You definitely just nuzzled me with your nose.” Jiang Chu rubbed his ear again. That spot was incredibly ticklish.
“Are you delusional?” Qin Zui frowned.
“Keep playing dumb, keep playing dumb.” Jiang Chu thought Qin Zui was just messing around with him. He laughed and flicked Qin Zui on the nose. “Are you a puppy or something?”
Qin Zui stared at him for a long time. Finally, he just let his eyelids droop. He didn’t say anything, letting Jiang Chu guide him by the waist and shoo him out.
