MNL Chapter 28
by VolareThe eleven-day holiday was approaching, and Yan Zhe had finally finished the last bucket of instant noodles at home. Not yet realizing the seriousness of the problem, he was leisurely drinking canned cola. Half an hour later, the person on the sofa’s face changed, and he suddenly rushed into the toilet. He almost died inside for an entire afternoon.
After rummaging through boxes and cabinets for a long time, Yan Zhe, because of his severe stomach pain, didn’t even bother to carefully read the instructions. He hastily glanced at the production date on the medicine and swallowed it with water.
The instant noodles these past few days made Yan Zhe extremely nauseous. With a flash of inspiration, he decided to freeload a meal at Xu Jing’s place, but the call was hung up by the other party as soon as it went through.
Not only that, he remembered that he had asked Xu Jing if he was home twenty minutes ago, and after waiting for a long time, he only received an extremely cold “Mm.” Then, the four or five messages he sent to test the waters were not even replied to.
Yan Zhe was vomiting and had diarrhea, and his brain became sluggish. It wasn’t until half an hour later, when he was standing outside 601, his face red and ears burning, listening to the sounds coming from inside, that he vaguely realized something.
Xu Jing said he was home, but he didn’t say he was alone.
Yan Zhe looked around and found that there were no cameras, so he wanted to lean closer to listen more carefully. But at that moment, the door slammed open.
Xu Jing’s eternally unchanging calm face suddenly appeared before him, and Yan Zhe was startled.
At first glance, it was no different from usual, but upon closer inspection, one could notice a slight hint of gloom between Xu Jing’s eyebrows and eyes. And that small piece of his earlobe, like a half-ripe peach, showed a faint pink color. Further down, even the collar of his rather private T-shirt was a bit wrinkled.
“…Fuck.” Yan Zhe immediately took two steps back, his eyes blinking as if they were cramping. He endured it, and after a long while, he squeezed out another sentence, “I really am fucked.”
Xu Jing didn’t look in the mirror, reached out and fiddled with the trendy little chain on the side of Yan Zhe’s pants, frowning, and said, “Did you come to the wrong place?”
Ever since puberty, Yan Zhe had paid great attention to his appearance, but unfortunately, his aesthetic was only based on his own unique preferences. Like those clothes and pants with pendants, not to mention whether they looked good or not, just the fact that they were heavy to wear and inconvenient to walk in was enough for Xu Jing to not understand.
Yan Zhe knew that the other party definitely hadn’t seen the message, so he smiled and gossiped, “Brother Jing, what were you doing just now?”
It would have been better if he hadn’t said anything. As soon as Xu Jing heard the word “just now,” his face instantly darkened, and he said coldly, “Fighting.”
Yan Zhe was stunned by this reaction at first, but quickly chuckled in his heart. Every time they fought, they couldn’t wait to knock the other person to the ground and kick them a few times. Who would be like this, with red ears and a wrinkled collar, like a kitten scratching an itch?
“Cough, cough cough!” Yan Zhe scratched his head and then coughed a few times pretentiously before asking, “Can I come in? Is it convenient?”
“Inconvenient.” Xu Jing said, “Get lost.”
“…” As soon as he finished speaking, Yan Zhe quickly slipped in through the crack in the door, sighing meaningfully as he walked, “Alas, Brother Jing, isn’t it just a puppy love? Haven’t I told you every time? You’re too unkind! I just wanted to see which gir– Um???”
The last two words were stuck in his throat because the moment he turned his head, he actually saw a man sitting on the sofa.
The man had his long legs crossed, his slender fingers holding a practice set, and after two seconds, he slowly and methodically wrote down the answer, and even spared a glance over here.
Yan Zhe’s pupils dilated sharply. Wasn’t this that person?
Living in 602, with a weird temper, sneaky, and although he was good-looking, a great handsome guy, but when did his relationship with Xu Jing become so good?
Yan Zhe felt like his body had been struck by lightning, scorched on the outside and tender on the inside.
After staring at each other for a full half minute, Xu Jing passed by Yan Zhe and picked up the book on the table as he sat back on the sofa, and sneered, “Yan Zhe, your thought process is getting more and more bizarre.”
Yan Zhe glanced at it and found that the cover said “Olympic Geography Competition Test Set.” Who would have thought that someone would be holed up at home doing practice problems during such a beautiful holiday, and this room had just made those kinds of suggestive sounds. At least he had considered all possibilities, except for this one.
“Damn, I’ve never seen you so diligent on vacation before.” Yan Zhe angrily grabbed a handful of melon seeds from the coffee table and started cracking them.
Xu Jing looked at the book and replied calmly, “That’s just because you didn’t see it.”
Xu Jing’s bookshelf on the surface was filled with some unreliable extracurricular books, but inside there were also many old study materials hidden. He had also done the behavior of doing problems late at night, but the young man’s face was more important than anything, so he definitely wouldn’t be willing to take the initiative to expose it.
Hearing this, Yan Zhe was very surprised, and inexplicably had a sense of emotion. The two of them were inseparable in middle school, and they often arrived late and left early. In class, Xu Jing slept and he followed suit, Xu Jing copied answers and he followed suit, and then they would run to the playground to play basketball after class. When they were on vacation, they just played games. As a result, when the grades came out, Xu Jing became first while playing, and he became the last.
Sometimes he would wonder if it was because there were innate differences between people, so he would be sad for a while in the middle of the night, and when he woke up in the morning, he would still treat Xu Jing as his best brother. Now hearing the other party say this, he suddenly felt that the knot pressed in his heart had been untied.
Unknowingly, Yan Zhe had already cracked a third of the melon seeds. He cleared his throat and brought the topic to the main purpose of coming here today.
“Brother Jing, let me stay here for dinner.” Yan Zhe said pitifully, “I’ve eaten instant noodles for four days.”
After hearing this, Xu Jing neither agreed nor refused, but the movements of his hands paused, and then he looked up at the person opposite him.
The movement was very small, but Yan Zhe was very sharp-eyed and shouted, “Brother Jing! This is your home, why are you looking at him!”
Belatedly, Shen Yan silently stopped writing.
Xu Jing’s brow furrowed quickly, and he asked back, “Which eye saw me looking at him?”
Yan Zhe was stunned, his tone weakened, “Both of my eyes saw it.”
“Go downstairs and turn left.”
“Why?”
“Go to the hospital to see an ophthalmologist.”
“…” After all, he was asking for a favor, so Yan Zhe had to temporarily swallow his anger and said, “I don’t care, if I don’t get this dinner, I’m not leaving here.”
Xu Jing glanced at Yan Zhe and said, “Is your family so poor that you can’t afford to eat?”
“No.” Yan Zhe kept changing his sitting position because his butt hurt. He said weakly, “Don’t you know? There’s been a problem with food safety in our city recently, and few people go out to eat now. I can’t cook, so I can only come to you.”
Xu Jing neither agreed nor refused, lowered his head and wrote two Olympic geography competition problems. He noticed in the corner of his eye that Yan Zhe was a little restless, twisting his body and moving around.
“Do you have fleas on you?”
Yan Zhe felt that even if he was shameless, he couldn’t say in front of others that he had been squatting in the toilet all afternoon and his butt hurt, so he casually made up a reason, “No, I’m just stretching my muscles.”
Xu Jing said without looking up, “Then go sweep the floor.”
“…”
At this moment, two cold laughs came from the left, accompanied by the slight sound of turning pages, which seemed particularly casual. Within five minutes, such sounds came over twice, which meant that Shen Yan had written a whole two pages of problems in such a short period of time, and could still spare some thought to be distracted by their words.
Yan Zhe had never had a good impression of Shen Yan, and always felt that this guy had a weird temper and wasn’t a friend worth associating with. But last time, Lin Jiayu said that Xu Jing had almost fought with a classmate from the next class for this person.
What kind of person was Xu Jing? He always hated being nosy. Even if something happened right under his nose, he was too lazy to take a second look as long as it wasn’t his business. The fact that Shen Yan could make Xu Jing do this for him showed that some things were not as simple as they seemed on the surface.
However, Yan Zhe had always been a spineless person. Since he knew that Shen Yan was the one who would be cooking dinner, he immediately became kind and amiable to the other party, a typical case of “whoever has milk is my mother.”
Glancing at the busy figure in the kitchen, Yan Zhe approached Xu Jing and said in a low voice, “What’s going on? When did your relationship become so good?”
Xu Jing snorted expressionlessly and said, “Which eye saw me having a good relationship with him?”
Yan Zhe thought, if you didn’t have a good relationship, would you fight for him? If you didn’t have a good relationship, would he come to your house to cook for you?
Xu Jing could see two meanings from Yan Zhe’s expression. First, I don’t believe it, and second, I don’t believe it at all.
But Yan Zhe just rubbed his stomach and said, “Forget it, I didn’t ask.”
As night slowly descended, when Shen Yan placed several dishes with excellent appearances on the table, they were actually just some home-cooked dishes, Mapo tofu, eggplant with minced meat, fungus and tofu skin, plus tomato and egg soup, but for Yan Zhe, who had eaten instant noodles for so many days, this was simply a feast.
“Damn, friend, you’re too awesome!”
Hearing this heartfelt praise, Shen Yan didn’t have much reaction, just nodded lightly, and his eyes lingered on Xu Jing for a while.
When Yan Zhe hadn’t come, they were indeed doing problems, and they did fight for a while. The cause was the final math problem in the holiday homework. Although the final answers were the same, Xu Jing looked at Shen Yan’s solution process and insisted that the method he used was extremely rare, and had an element of guessing in it.
The two were still discussing at first, but later Shen Yan’s voice sounded a little impatient, and Xu Jing was very upset. The situation began to spiral out of control.
It was difficult for boys to control the strength in their hands when they were messing around. Xu Jing didn’t know what he had been scratched by, but when it was over, he found several bloody marks on his arm.
His forearm was red, and it looked a little shocking. Shen Yan’s face didn’t look good when he was applying the medicine.
But Xu Jing felt that these small injuries were nothing at all. He wasn’t someone who was delicate and pampered. The only thing he was angry about was that Shen Yan was too strong and he couldn’t beat him.
But regardless of whether he could beat him or not, it seemed that he had won in the end.
Xu Jing thought, for the sake of this meal, he wouldn’t argue with him.