Chapter 33

Ji Su fled back into the bathroom, quickly locked the door behind him, and leaned against it to calm his racing heart.

He had never seen Gu Zhao look at him like that before — it was far too fierce.

Was it because he'd seen his body with absolutely no mental preparation that he'd gotten so angry?

*Knock, knock* — two taps suddenly sounded behind him.

Ji Su startled, turned away from the glass door, and stepped back.

"The clothes you wanted." Gu Zhao's voice came from outside the door, and through the layer of frosted glass his voice was hoarse, as though scalded by smoke and fire.

"N-no need!" Ji Su pressed himself against the sink, fingers gripping the edge. "I think my shirt might still be wearable…"

If he let Gu Zhao in now, would the man press him down in the bathroom and beat him?

There was no sound from outside. After a long while, that tall figure moved away.

Ji Su immediately breathed a sigh of relief and snatched up the white shirt, pulling it on.

His slender fingers trembled from the tension, and it took him ages to fasten every button.

After waiting a few more minutes, Ji Su eased the bathroom door open — and was caught off guard, falling straight into those bottomless black eyes again.

Gu Zhao hadn't gone far after all; he was leaning against the wall at the corner, waiting.

"Um…" Ji Su edged outward little by little. "I'm done washing — I'm going to sleep now."

Gu Zhao pressed his thin lips tight together, fixing Ji Su with a stare that defied description.

Ji Su's heart lurched again, and he quickened his steps toward the sofa.

Gu Zhao closed his eyes briefly, forcibly wrestling the snarling beast inside him back into its cage, then set his heavy steps toward the bathroom.

The steam in the bathroom hadn't yet dispersed; mingled with the shower gel he usually used was a clean, pleasant fragrance, and the air was damp and hot — his blood, still unappeased, surged out of control once more.

*Click* — Gu Zhao closed the bathroom door behind him.

Over on the sofa, Ji Su heard the sound of water running from the bathroom again and couldn't help feeling a little puzzled.

Hadn't Gu Zhao already showered earlier? Why was he showering again?

But Ji Su didn't think too much about it. He'd meant to watch a study video, but his eyelids grew heavier and heavier…

He'd lain awake past midnight last night, then sat through a full day of classes today with his nerves wound tight the whole time — body and mind were utterly spent now.

When Gu Zhao emerged from the bathroom once more, he found the boy sprawled on the sofa, fast asleep.

A pair of pale, slender legs dangled over the edge of the sofa, his posture careless, his sleep utterly unguarded.

Gu Zhao walked over, bent down, slid a burning palm beneath the soft hollow of his knee, and lifted him with effortless ease.

"Mm…" The person in his arms flinched at the heat, letting out a kittenish little sound, but didn't wake.

Gu Zhao carried him to the bed, set him down, and stayed bent over him, staring at that beautiful face.

If Ji Su had woken at that moment, that gaze alone would have sent his heart racing again.

After a long while, Gu Zhao slowly straightened his back.

In all those years of groping forward alone in the dark, the first thing he'd learned was patience.

Like a ravenous beast — the hungrier it grows, the more incomparable the satisfaction of that first moment of feeding.

Until then, he would wait with patience, waiting for that exquisite moment.

*

The next day was Friday. Ji Su woke early and immediately received the reminder he'd set on his phone calendar.

Time had flown — tomorrow was the day of the middle school entrance exam.

After breakfast, on the way back to school, Ji Su sent Ji Chen a message.

Ji Su: [Tomorrow's the exam — good luck.]

The reply came almost instantly, as though the other had been waiting for his message.

Ji Chen: [Okay, ge! I'll do my best!]

Ji Su: [Get plenty of rest these next few days, and keep your meals light.]

Ji Su: [Don't be nervous — just play it normally, that's plenty for you.]

Ji Chen: [I know, thanks for caring, ge!]

Ji Chen: [Ge, take care of yourself out there on your own too!]

Ji Su: [Okay.]

Ji Chen: [Oh right — we said before that once I'm done with exams I can come find you at A University, don't forget, ge!]

Ji Su: [Mm, I haven't forgotten.]

Gu Zhao glanced at his phone screen. "Who are you messaging?"

"My younger brother." Ji Su paused briefly. "Half-brother. Same father, different mother."

"Mm." Gu Zhao responded, then asked with studied casualness, "How old is he?"

Ji Su pocketed his phone. "Just started middle school."

Back then, after his father and mother had divorced, it hadn't been long before his father remarried — to Qin Auntie — and soon Ji Chen was born.

That was when he'd learned how easily the human heart could change.

Back at school, the two parted ways for their classes.

Ji Su couldn't tell whether, after last night, Gu Zhao had finally realized he wasn't Mengmeng — and he didn't have the nerve to ask directly, so he found himself tangled up in it again.

"Su Su, you're spacing out again." Qiao Jin pinched his arm lightly. "If you don't come clean today, I swear I'll—"

Ji Su came back to himself and asked hesitantly, "Xiao Qiao, do you think a person's sexuality can suddenly change?"

"Huh? Sexuality is something you're born with." Qiao Jin paused, then added, "But if the object of affection is you, bending a straight guy is still so easy."

Ji Su: "……"

"Wait!" A light bulb went off in Qiao Jin's head. "Are you talking about Gu Zhao? Did you bend Gu Zhao?"

Ji Su was startled by his friend's leap of logic, but denied it anyway. "Nothing of the sort."

Gu Zhao liked Mengmeng, and Mengmeng was a girl — how could that count as him bending anyone?

"I knew it — my instincts have never been wrong! The way Gu Zhao looks at you is just off!" Qiao Jin grew excited on his own. "School Heartthrob Gu's possessiveness toward you is off the charts — he looks like he wants to deport every living thing within three meters of you!"

"It's not that dramatic." Ji Su sighed helplessly. "Xiao Qiao, stop guessing."

"Fine, fine, I won't say another word." Qiao Jin made a zipping motion across his lips.

After a few seconds of silence, Ji Su said, "Xiao Qiao, I really do think of him as a friend."

He treasured every kindness he received, and even more so every person who was good to him.

"But he may not feel the same way." Qiao Jin shook his head, unable to resist warning him. "Anyway, Su Su, you need to be careful around him from now on."

With a personality like School Heartthrob Gu's, if he really set his sights on someone — man or woman — he'd stop at nothing to have them.

Ji Su was a little lost. "How careful?"

"Just watch your physical distance, and try not to show off your legs or waist around him." Qiao Jin coached him in detail. "Especially your legs — whatever you do, don't wear shorts around him."

Ji Su: "……"

Last night, it seemed he'd shown everything he shouldn't have…

"It won't happen." Ji Su shivered, choosing to stand by his own view. "Gu Zhao is straight — he won't fall for a guy."

Qiao Jin clicked his tongue. "Let's hope so."

*

Friday evening, the Basketball Club had its regular practice. Ji Su had barely finished breathing a sigh of relief when a senior called him over to the Music Society.

The moment he stepped inside, he found the members gathered in a circle, deep in heated discussion.

"Ji Su, you're here!" The vice president spotted him with sharp eyes and immediately waved him over. "Come quick!"

Ji Su walked over. "Is something going on?"

"Little Susu, you're too clever!" Lin Yan rose to meet him. "The Cultural Festival is right around the corner, and our Music Society is teaming up with the Dance Society to put on two joint programs."

"Oh." Ji Su answered. "That sounds great."

Lin Yan clapped her hands together. "We talked it over, and we've decided to send you out for one of the numbers!"

Ji Su: "Huh?"

"You're the face and the pride of our Music Society — for a big occasion like the festival, we have to send out our ace!" The vice president beamed from the side. "Let everyone see what the Music Society can really do!"

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm the right fit." Ji Su considered for a moment, then explained in earnest. "My piano playing is far too amateur — for an occasion like this, I can't carry the Music Society's reputation, and besides—"

"Oh, Little Susu, stop being so modest!" Lin Yan cut him off at once. "That piano piece you love most — how many of us here could even play it?"

Ji Su gave a small start. "That's…"

"Exactly!" The vice president picked up the thread. "The Dance Society has their eye on that piece, 'Look Forward' — they're choreographing a dance to it, to pair with your piano for a stage performance."

"All right." Ji Su lowered his lashes. "I'll give it a try."

"Ahhhh, amazing!" Lin Yan lunged at him as if to throw her arms around him. "I love you to death, Little Susu!"

Ji Su stepped back, reaching out only to steady her by the arm. "Senior, please calm down."

"Oh, right!" Lin Yan steadied herself, reaching up to smooth her bangs. "Then it's settled — I'll have that girl from the Dance Society get in touch with you later."

"Okay," Ji Su agreed.

They discussed a while longer, and the members drifted away one by one.

Ji Su stayed behind, intending to practice for a bit.

"Little Susu, I haven't seen you around much lately." Lin Yan walked up to him. "I kept meaning to tell you — I'd like to find a chance to treat the person who helped me track down that online scammer to a meal."

After getting the information, she had not only recovered the money she'd lost and reclaimed her private photos, but had exposed the scumbag online, letting him suffer the most spectacular social death imaginable — and the satisfaction of it was beyond words.

Ji Su declined gently. "You don't have to, Senior."

Gu Zhao had done the good deed without wanting any credit, so to this day Lin Yan still had no idea who that kind stranger actually was.

"No way, that's way too mysterious." Lin Yan felt something was off and ventured a guess. "You didn't pay for it yourself on my behalf, did you?"

Ji Su: "…"

If Gu Zhao were the sort to accept his money, things might have been a good deal simpler.

"Really not, Senior." Ji Su replied softly. "That whole thing is behind us now — please don't dwell on it anymore."

"Fine…" Lin Yan had no choice but to give up. "I'll head off then — don't practice too late."

"Okay." Ji Su smiled. "Goodbye, Senior."

In the music room, only he remained.

Ji Su lifted both hands, and his jade-white fingertips settled onto the black and white keys.

Without his noticing, a fine, pattering rain had begun to fall outside the window; mingling with the lilting, pleasant sound of the piano, it lent the moment a peculiar air of lonely, melancholy beauty.

When the piece ended, Ji Su let out a quiet breath — and suddenly sensed a gaze fixed on him from behind.

He turned his head, and there stood Gu Zhao at the door, a black umbrella in his hand, its tip dripping water onto the floor.

Ji Su blinked, startled. "How did you know I was here?"

"It's raining." Gu Zhao set the umbrella against the doorframe and strode toward him on those long legs. "I came to bring you an umbrella."

Something stirred at the tip of Ji Su's heart. "Thank you…"

At the school gate on every rainy day in the past, he had longed — like all the other children — for someone to come with an umbrella and walk him home.

Later, he had learned to check the weather forecast ahead of time, or simply to walk home in the rain; at worst, he'd catch a small cold.

This was the first time anyone had come to bring him an umbrella in the rain.

Gu Zhao stopped beside the piano. "How much longer do you need to practice?"

"I'm done." Ji Su lifted his eyes. "Gu Zhao, why do you like this piece?"

'Look Forward' was actually a fairly obscure piano piece — one most people had never heard. He himself had begun practicing it by chance as a child, and once he started, years went by before he knew it.

Gu Zhao gazed at him, and in the dark depths of his eyes rose a complicated emotion Ji Su couldn't read.

After a moment, Gu Zhao answered in a low voice, "Because this piano piece saw me through a very… particular stretch of days."

"I see." Ji Su nodded, his fingertips brushing lightly over the keys. "I understand — it saw me through my whole childhood, too."

"Let's go." Gu Zhao drew his gaze back. "Time for dinner."

Ji Su stood up. "Wait — there's something I need to say to you."

He couldn't keep running from it any longer; he had to lay everything out plainly with Gu Zhao, once and for all.

Gu Zhao turned back. "What is it?"

Ji Su pressed his lips together. "Gu Zhao, I genuinely want to be friends with you."

Gu Zhao looked at him. "I know. And then?"

"Mengmeng might be closer to your ideal type, but she doesn't exist." Ji Su forced himself to meet those pitch-black eyes. "You may not be able to forget her for a while, but you'll meet a better girl someday."

Gu Zhao took a step closer. "Go on."

Ji Su instinctively retreated, his hands landing haphazardly on the keys; the sound they made startled him into a flinch.

"You saw it last night too — I'm a guy, nothing like a girl at all." Ji Su pressed on, forcing himself through it. "When you saw my body, didn't you think it was — ah!"

Along with the disordered clatter of the piano, he was once again lifted by Gu Zhao and seated atop it.

In an instant, everything that had happened in the music room last time came flooding back to him.

One of Gu Zhao's hands gripped that slender waist; the other — a large hand with sharply defined knuckles — pressed the black and white keys in turn, unhurried and deliberate.

The clear, bright notes of the piano became something like a death knell.

Gu Zhao slowly drew his hand back. "Do you know what was going through my head last night, when I was looking at you?"

Ji Su shook his head. "I don't…"

Gu Zhao leaned close to his ear, asking in that low, magnetic voice, "Then do you know what I went into the bathroom to do afterward?"

Ji Su's heart gave a sudden leap, and some absurd thought flickered up from who knew where.

Gu Zhao breathed him in, slow and deliberate. "I picked up the clothes you'd just changed out of — they were soaked through with your scent—"

"Don't say it!" Ji Su finally understood, and without thinking raised his hand to cover Gu Zhao's lips. "Don't say it…"

Gu Zhao caught that slender wrist and moved his hand aside; his thin lips drew closer still to Ji Su's ear.

His scalding breath fanned across the sensitive lobe, sending an inexpressible shiver through Ji Su's whole body; a flush of red spread at visible speed from the tip of his ear down to the pale column of his neck.

His thin, slender back went rigid, and Ji Su instinctively tried to pull away.

The next second, a large hand cupped the back of his head, pinning him firmly in place.

Gu Zhao's voice sank into a rasp. "And that red dress you wore — the scent it left was faint, but the moment I picture you in it, I can't hold back the excitement…"

Ji Su's mind went blank. "H-how could you…"

"Now — do you still think I'm straight?" Gu Zhao slowly turned his face back, and his burning lips brushed the flushed rim of Ji Su's ear.

Ji Su shuddered all over, his body curling in on itself just slightly.

Gu Zhao clenched his back teeth, and the color of his eyes grew darker, deeper.

Just from a few sentences, and already so shy he looked this pitiful.

If he knew every thought inside Gu Zhao's head, he'd surely be frightened into running away, wouldn't he?

But then again — where was there left to run?

Gu Zhao drew out one hand and caught Ji Su's slender, pale fingers, guiding them downward along with his own.

Ji Su was forced to press his own palm against his chest; it felt as though a frolicking fawn were bounding inside his ribcage, and the clear, steady thump-thump of his heartbeat rang loud enough to hear.

"Before I ever told you I liked you, you'd already learned how to refuse me." Gu Zhao spoke each word deliberately, like a demon's whisper. "So ask your own heart — do you really want to refuse me completely?"