Chapter 13
After putting on the duvet cover and spreading the bedsheet, the next familiar step should be undressing and showering together.
They smoothed out the quilt, neither of them speaking.
Song Shuci stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. Jian Wu, clutching the phone he had snatched back from Song Shuci, scrolled through the news but didn’t absorb a single word.
After a while, Song Shuci spoke: “Alright, hurry up and go shower.”
Jian Wu leaned back, his chin resting on the back of the chair: “Always rushing me, are you annoying or what?”
“Suit yourself, but you’re not allowed in bed without showering.” Song Shuci pulled out the computer chair and opened his laptop.
“You even brought a laptop on this trip?”
“Mm,” Song Shuci said, “To read a paper.”
Jian Wu: “…”
The barely-there intimate atmosphere vanished. He didn’t want to argue with Song Shuci anymore, deciding that showering and sleeping early was the priority.
He lazily opened his luggage and started rummaging through his clothes. He found a pair of underwear, then pajamas and a towel. However, after circling the bathroom, he couldn’t find anywhere to put his clothes.
This meant that after showering, he would either have to walk out naked or ask someone to hand him his clothes.
The atmosphere suddenly became subtle again.
Jian Wu recalled his initial good impression of the hotel and couldn’t help but complain: I spoke too soon.
He cursed the hotel designer a hundred times in his heart. After a while, he looked at Song Shuci.
The latter had already started reading that incomprehensible paper. Sensing his gaze, he raised an eyebrow slightly, “Something wrong?”
Forget it, relying on Song Shuci to hand him his clothes was worse than death.
He rummaged through his luggage again and finally found a few laundry bags under the clothes hangers in the hotel wardrobe.
Jian Wu put his change of clothes into the laundry bag. After confirming the narrow bathroom had no hooks and the doorknob couldn’t hold anything, he almost stormed out of the hotel to complain about this idiotic design.
Stay calm.
Jian Wu took several deep breaths, finally placing the plastic bag with his clothes on the floor by the bathroom door and rushing into the bathroom, turning on the showerhead.
The warm water temporarily soothed his anger. The wall panel had a small speaker, and he played two songs, briefly allowing himself to forget how painful it was to share a hotel room with his ex.
However, no matter how long he avoided it, there was always a time when he had to face it.
Jian Wu showered for too long. His fingertips became wrinkled, and his head started to feel dizzy. Then he suddenly heard the sound of the door closing outside.
—Song Shuci had gone out.
He quickly squatted down and pushed the bathroom door open a crack.
He held the door with one hand and rummaged through the bag for his towel with the other. After drying himself, he reached for his underwear.
His underwear was tucked inside his pajamas, difficult to find with one hand. He used both hands, bracing himself against the door as he searched, when suddenly, with a click, the door opened.
The bathroom was right next to the hotel room door. Before Jian Wu could react, Song Shuci appeared before him.
Jian Wu, Song Shuci: “…”
One was squatting naked, looking up; the other was fully dressed, looking down. It was a full view, to say the least.
Song Shuci quickly slammed the door shut behind him, but his gaze uncontrollably fell on Jian Wu’s bare neck and hands, reddened from the hot water.
“Fuck–”
Jian Wu abruptly stepped back and closed the bathroom door. The former couple, separated by a frosted glass door, stood in awkward silence, the air seemingly frozen.
After a long time, Song Shuci finally cleared his throat and said: “You changed underwear brands?”
“…Get out.”
It was twenty minutes later when Jian Wu finally emerged, dressed in his pajamas.
Song Shuci was back in his previous position, reading his paper. Jian Wu quickly glanced at him and looked away.
After a moment, as if noticing something, he looked at Song Shuci again.
“You… you’re already hard?”
Song Shuci’s fingers, resting on the mouse wheel, paused. After a moment, he stared at the screen and said calmly: “Getting an erection after receiving visual stimulation from a former sexual partner is a normal physiological phenomenon.”
Jian Wu’s gaze fell on Song Shuci’s laptop: “Really?”
Song Shuci pointed at the screen: “The paper says so.”
Jian Wu was skeptical: “Which paper?”
“…” Song Shuci, “Erectile dysfunction.”
“Another English one.” Jian Wu curled his lip and turned to get the hairdryer, clearly losing interest.
Song Shuci breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to his paper. But just as he was calming down, Jian Wu appeared beside him again, holding the hairdryer.
“Why aren’t you drying your hair in the bathroom?” Song Shuci rubbed his temples.
“It’s stuffy in there.”
“It’s noisy here.” Song Shuci covered his ears.
“Then bear with it.”
Song Shuci: “…”
The man’s skin was fair, his wet hair looking as if it had been dyed with ink, a stark contrast of black and white. Accompanied by the roar of the hairdryer, tiny water droplets from Jian Wu’s hair splashed onto Song Shuci’s face and arms, sending shivers across his skin and muscles.
Song Shuci silently rolled his sleeves back down, but the barely-subsided excitement in a certain part of his body flared up again.
He exhaled and said: “I’m going to the restroom. There’s food on the table for you after you’re done drying your hair.”
Jian Wu always found it troublesome to dry his hair completely, usually just drying it halfway before giving up. Now, hearing there was food, he casually blew his hair a few times and tossed the hairdryer aside.
Seeing the McDonald’s on the table, Jian Wu realized Song Shuci must have gone out to get takeout while he was showering.
He hadn’t eaten much barbecue and was indeed a little hungry now.
There were two burgers, two different flavored fruit pies, and two cups of cola on the table. He quickly finished a burger and a pie, but still felt a little hungry.
Jian Wu glanced at the closed bathroom door and quickly counted to three in his heart, thinking that if Song Shuci didn’t come out by the time he finished counting, he would eat the other fruit pie.
When Song Shuci came out, he found only one burger left.
He held his cola and looked at the prime suspect: “Where’s my fruit pie?”
Jian Wu was scrolling through his Moments. The post Ling Meng had made for him earlier had received many comments. Jian Wu replied to the comments while saying to Song Shuci: “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know who ate it?”
Jian Wu said seriously: “Maybe a ghost ate it.”
Song Shuci was exasperated: “I seem to remember someone telling me to believe in science.”
“Believe in it when you should, don’t believe in it when you shouldn’t.”
“Besides,” Jian Wu pointedly glanced at the bathroom door, “You shouldn’t eat these things when you’re constipated, it’s unhealthy.”
Song Shuci was confused: “How am I constipated?”
“Didn’t you usually finish in the restroom in five minutes? You were in there for almost twenty minutes just now, isn’t that constipation?”
“I was–”
“What?”
“Forget it.” Song Shuci didn’t want to explain what he was doing in the restroom, so he took two bites of his burger to calm down.
He caught sight of Jian Wu’s phone screen and realized he was looking at Ling Meng’s carefully crafted post, “Only by waving goodbye to the wrong one can you meet the right one.” He couldn’t help but say: “Since it’s a Moments post for your ex, shouldn’t you let me see it to achieve the desired effect?”
Jian Wu hummed twice, not responding.
“Add me back on WeChat,” Song Shuci said.
“No,” the memory of the previous night’s WeChat incident flashed through Jian Wu’s mind, and he said coldly, “We don’t have anything to talk about on WeChat.”
“You ate the food I bought, shouldn’t you transfer me the money?”
“I’ll transfer it to you through Alipay.” Jian Wu opened his payment code.
“No…”
“Hm?”
“It’s nothing.”
Song Shuci originally wanted to say it wasn’t necessary, but he suddenly remembered that Alipay transfers showed the last few digits of the other person’s phone number.
He wanted to confirm something.
After receiving the transfer, Song Shuci glanced at the account information.
Although the other party’s phone number wasn’t fully displayed, the visible digits clearly weren’t Jian Wu’s old number. Song Shuci’s expression suddenly became complex.
“Your phone was always unreachable back then,” he said, “I thought you might have changed your number, I didn’t expect it to be true.”
“Blocking is too troublesome, changing numbers is faster,” Jian Wu said.
“A phone number you used for seven or eight years,” Song Shuci paused, as if unable to continue, “You just gave it up like that…”
Jian Wu’s mouth was faster than his brain: “I also gave up a boyfriend I had for seven or eight years just like that.”
“Oh,” Song Shuci suddenly chuckled, his tone cold enough to freeze the air, “That’s quite impressive.”
This chuckle made Jian Wu’s fingers, busy typing, abruptly pause.
He quickly realized he had said something unpleasant again and that Song Shuci was angry. But he looked at Song Shuci, his mind blanking, not knowing what to say.
They fell silent, the air in the hotel room suffocating, as if it had been sucked into a vacuum.
Song Shuci looked at him, seemingly waiting for him to say something, but Jian Wu ultimately said nothing.
After a while, Song Shuci put down his half-eaten burger and stood up: “I’m going to shower.”
Jian Wu could only open his mouth and say “oh.”
Song Shuci put his change of clothes into a clean laundry bag, then took a hanger and threaded it through the bag’s handles, hanging the hanger on the top of the bathroom door. The two ends of the hanger just happened to hold the opening of the bag, so the bag with his clothes was securely hung behind the door, neither getting wet nor falling down.
After finishing these arrangements, Song Shuci suddenly turned to look at Jian Wu.
Jian Wu hadn’t had time to look away and was caught red-handed. He averted his gaze guiltily and heard Song Shuci say pointedly: “Use your brain.”
Jian Wu, who had been reflecting on himself, instantly stopped, holding his cola and standing up abruptly: “You’re the one without a brain!”
However, Song Shuci had already closed the bathroom door, seemingly not wanting to bother with him.
Jian Wu was fuming. He put down his phone and marched over angrily.
For ventilation, the bathroom door in this hotel wasn’t completely sealed. There was a gap of about twenty centimeters between the top of the door and the doorframe. This was where Song Shuci had hung the hanger.
Although Song Shuci was slightly taller than Jian Wu, Jian Wu could still reach the hanger by standing on tiptoe.
“Do you think your method is so clever?” He reached out and grabbed the top of the hanger, threatening, “Say that again.”
Song Shuci had just taken off his clothes and turned on the water when he saw a hand reach in from above and grab his hanger, as if if he said half a wrong word, that hand would knock the hanger to the ground, sending his clothes tumbling into the water.
Afraid he would cause trouble, Song Shuci subconsciously covered Jian Wu’s hand with his wet one.
Jian Wu, who had just been acting tough, instantly fell silent. He looked up. Above him, the steam from the bathroom drifted out from the gap above their clasped hands. Song Shuci’s hand was wet and hot, pressed tightly against his skin.
They were separated by a frosted glass door, unable to see each other, only their hands in sight.
Perhaps he hadn’t adjusted the water temperature yet, the water in the bathroom was clearly quite hot.
The excessive heat surged into Jian Wu’s heart through their touching fingers, making his heart race in the steamy air.
Thump, thump, thump.
Each beat was clearly audible.
He hurriedly tried to pull his hand back, but Song Shuci held it tightly. Even with the hot water as lubrication, his fingers couldn’t escape Song Shuci’s grasp.
The metal top of the hanger pressed against his palm, distinct and slightly painful.
“Song. Shu. Ci!”
He threatened the person inside: “Let go!”
“If I let go, you’ll throw my clothes into the water.” Song Shuci was clearly aware of his situation.
“I won’t, I promise.” Jian Wu curled his other hand and bit his lip, “Hurry up, my arm is getting sore.”
“It’s getting sore after just a few minutes?” Song Shuci asked doubtfully.
“If you don’t let go, I’m kicking the door!”
Song Shuci didn’t fall for his threat: “You’ll have to pay if the door breaks.”
Jian Wu couldn’t help but curse, his face flushed from the warmth of Song Shuci’s hand.
The air between them had become strangely hot. Jian Wu looked at the fog on the glass panel caused by his breath and was a little surprised.
His breath was actually hotter than the steam from the bathroom.
Distracted, his fingers suddenly felt warmer.
Song Shuci had turned on the showerhead again at some point. The hand holding his slid down to cover the bag of clothes, while the other hand held the showerhead and sprayed water onto his hand, which he hadn’t yet withdrawn.
The wet, hot water washed over his fingers, and some water droplets splashed onto his face through the gap above the doorframe.
Jian Wu abruptly pulled his hand back and angrily cursed at the person inside: “Song Shuci, are you in elementary school!?”
The water droplets running down Jian Wu’s arm changed direction and fell to the ground after he withdrew his hand, but the blood rushed to his head.
The person inside, oblivious to all this, continued to provoke: “Are you going to keep causing trouble?”
Jian Wu pursed his lips, grabbed a tissue to wipe the water from his hand, didn’t respond, and lay back on the bed.
When Song Shuci came out, he had already curled up in the quilt like a silkworm.
