Little Meteor Chapter 28
byChapter 28: Are You a Love Fool?
Shen Mu woke up the next day with a splitting headache. It took him three seconds to realize he wasn’t in his own home. He was still very sleepy, so he closed his eyes and lay there for a while before sitting up. A sticky note was attached to his forehead—one that Shen Mu had left here previously. Jiang Chengxuan liked using solid-colored sticky notes, while Shen Mu loved buying patterned ones, the cuter the better. He hadn’t expected Jiang Chengxuan to keep it.
Shen Mu peeled the little bear sticky note off his forehead. It read: “Breakfast is in the microwave. Heat it for one minute. If you have a headache, there is honey on the lower shelf of the coffee table. Drinking it mixed with water will help.”
He stared at the note for a long time before getting up. He quickly washed up and ate breakfast, dutifully drinking the honey water. He had drunk too much wine last night, and his head still hurt badly. After sitting for a short while, he went back to bed. When he opened his eyes again, it was the afternoon. Jiang Chengxuan was sitting by the bed. “Awake?”
Shen Mu propped himself up on his arms and rubbed his temples. “What time is it?”
“Four in the afternoon.” Jiang Chengxuan handed him a glass of warm water. “Drink some water first.”
Shen Mu took the cup and drank a few sips, his voice still a little hoarse. “Why are you back so early?”
“I took annual leave,” Jiang Chengxuan said.
“Annual leave?” Shen Mu paused. “Why the sudden leave?”
“I had surgery this morning, couldn’t get away, or I wouldn’t have waited until now,” Jiang Chengxuan reached out and tilted his chin up, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Are you sober now?”
The distance was too close. The dark color in Jiang Chengxuan’s eyes was intense, and Shen Mu vaguely sensed what he was about to do. His breathing became erratic. “…Yes, I’m sober.”
“That’s good. I’ve been holding back all night. I don’t intend to be a gentleman,” Jiang Chengxuan’s thumb brushed against his lower lip. “What we didn’t do last night, we’re doing now.”
Before Shen Mu could react, Jiang Chengxuan had already kissed him. Jiang Chengxuan always considered Shen Mu’s feelings in everything he did, and previous kisses had been restrained, but this time was different. It carried a fierce possessiveness. His tongue pried open Shen Mu’s teeth and drove straight in. The kiss was deep and heavy, as if he meant to plunder all of Shen Mu’s breath. Shen Mu’s back was pressed against the headboard, with nowhere to retreat, forcing him to tilt his head back and endure.
“Wait…” Shen Mu pushed Jiang Chengxuan’s shoulder during a break for air. “Are you sure you want to…”
“I’m sure,” Jiang Chengxuan turned his head and kissed his fingertips. “I’ve been sure for a long time.”
Shen Mu stared at him for a moment. “Jiang Chengxuan, you’ll regret this.”
Jiang Chengxuan’s movement paused, and he chuckled lightly. “I won’t.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Shen Mu stopped struggling, and his arms climbed around Jiang Chengxuan’s shoulders.
Jiang Chengxuan lowered his head and gently kissed Shen Mu’s slightly furrowed brow. “Don’t be afraid. Leave it to me.”
Shen Mu tilted his head back slightly, his eyelashes slowly lifting. His eyes, usually cool and clear, were now hazy, carrying a mix of confusion and dependence. Jiang Chengxuan’s thumb gently brushed the corner of his eye and he called out, “Mumu.”
Shen Mu’s eyelashes fluttered, and his lips parted slightly, but only a sharp gasp escaped.
“…Jiang Chengxuan.” Shen Mu’s voice was trembling, the corners of his eyes were red, and a thin layer of sweat gradually appeared on his pale skin. Jiang Chengxuan paused his movements. Shen Mu looked at him hazily, rubbing his cheek against Jiang Chengxuan’s palm.
Jiang Chengxuan kissed his sweaty forehead. “Not that.”
Shen Mu’s eyes reflected Jiang Chengxuan’s outline. He reached up to stroke Jiang Chengxuan’s cheek, his fingertips lightly tracing his features, from his brow bone to the bridge of his nose, finally stopping at the corner of his lips. “Ah-Xuan.”
Hearing that soft call, the darkness in Jiang Chengxuan’s eyes deepened. He gave a low “Mm,” and said, “I’m here.”
…
“Can’t sleep?”
Jiang Chengxuan held him from behind and kissed his neck. Shen Mu yawned. “I feel more awake after showering.”
Jiang Chengxuan smiled. “Then turn around. Let’s talk.”
Shen Mu was obedient, flipping over to face him. Jiang Chengxuan kissed his forehead. “What are your plans now?”
Shen Mu traced circles on Jiang Chengxuan’s chest for a while before speaking. “I did plan to resign and go back to my hometown, but I still haven’t. I wasn’t deliberately avoiding you; there were just many things I hadn’t figured out. My mind was a mess.”
Jiang Chengxuan pulled him closer and laughed. “I understand. I never blamed you.”
Shen Mu looked at him for a moment, then buried his face in his chest and sighed. “I might not be able to tell my parents about us for a while. Will you mind?”
Jiang Chengxuan gently stroked Shen Mu’s back. “No.”
“Actually, I’ve thought a lot this past month. Whatever decision you make is fine. I have no right to demand anything of you,” Jiang Chengxuan smiled. “If you decide to go back to your hometown, I’ll just figure out a way to move there. If that really doesn’t work…”
Shen Mu lifted his head from his embrace. “If it really doesn’t work, then what?”
Jiang Chengxuan pinched his cheek. “If it really doesn’t work, I’ll just live alone from now on. I’ve managed all these years anyway.”
Shen Mu couldn’t help but laugh out loud and joked, “Are you a love fool? The kind who absolutely must have me in this life?”
“Yes,” Jiang Chengxuan nodded. “I must have you.”
Jiang Chengxuan said it so naturally, without any hint of joking, that Shen Mu was suddenly speechless. “You…”
Jiang Chengxuan raised his hand and covered his eyes. “Sleep for a while. Aren’t you tired?”
Shen Mu took his hand away. “No, I’m starving.”
“Starving?” Jiang Chengxuan sat up, but lay back down less than three seconds later. “The fridge is empty. What should we do if there’s no food?”
“No food?” Shen Mu was confused. “Isn’t your fridge usually full?”
“You weren’t here, so why keep the fridge full? I was too lazy to cook,” Jiang Chengxuan brushed the hair from his forehead. “What do you want to eat? I’ll go buy it for you.”
Shen Mu checked the time. It was already past midnight, and only the night market would have food. He thought for a moment. “Chicken cutlet and pan-fried dumplings, maybe.”
“Alright,” Jiang Chengxuan got up and put on his clothes. “You stay put. I’ll go get them.”
Shen Mu kept watching him. Jiang Chengxuan reached the door but turned back. “What’s wrong?”
Shen Mu sat up and clung to him like a sloth. “What should I do? I don’t think I want you to leave.”
Jiang Chengxuan froze. Shen Mu’s words were soft and light, with a slight nasal tone. He had never known Shen Mu could be so affectionate. Shen Mu didn’t want him to leave, and he didn’t want to go out either. “If you keep this up, I really won’t be able to leave.”
Shen Mu hugged him for a while before letting go, settling back under the covers. “Go on.”
Jiang Chengxuan kissed his face. “Wait for me, be good.”
He rarely ate fried food, thinking it unhealthy, but since Shen Mu wanted it, he could only indulge him. He bought the fried dumplings and chicken cutlet and returned to find Shen Mu nearly asleep. Still, Shen Mu forced himself to finish the late-night snack, brushed his teeth, and then finally went to sleep. In his daze, he heard Jiang Chengxuan discussing something with him. “Will you come home with me tomorrow?”
Shen Mu half-opened his eyes. “Will your parents like me?”
Jiang Chengxuan rubbed his head. “I don’t think anyone could dislike you.”
“Plenty of people dislike me,” Shen Mu leaned closer into his arms. After saying a couple of sentences, he wasn’t so sleepy anymore. “In elementary and middle school, lots of people didn’t like me.”
Jiang Chengxuan frowned. “Why?”
“I don’t know why,” Shen Mu’s mind wasn’t clear right now; he just said whatever came to mind. “When did you realize you liked men?”
Jiang Chengxuan said, “High school, I guess. I was never very interested in girls.”
“Oh,” Shen Mu nodded. “I had a teacher in elementary school, and even now I can’t figure out why she hated me so much. If I had to give a reason, it was probably because I didn’t go to her house for tutoring.”
They lived in a small county town, and in those early years, regulations weren’t strict. Tutoring was a tacit rule. If you went to the teacher’s house for tutoring and gave them gifts, the teacher would treat you better. No one thought there was anything wrong with it, or that it was unreasonable. But Shen Mu’s parents’ generation still held teachers in high regard. They firmly believed that teachers were engineers of the human soul, and they taught Shen Mu to respect his teachers and believe that whatever the teacher said was right.
But Shen Mu truly didn’t know what he had done wrong to be targeted by her every few days. She would say Shen Mu wasn’t paying attention in class, wasn’t doing his homework, had poor foundational knowledge, was daydreaming in class, and was playing with something under the desk.
His deskmate at the time was a boy whose parents were absent, so to save trouble, they left him to live at the teacher’s house, sending her a lot of money every month. That boy used Shen Mu’s clothes to wipe his dirty basketball, and the teacher sat right there without saying a word.
Shen Mu felt that children back then were inherently malicious. They lacked discernment and didn’t know what they were doing. Seeing the teacher target him daily, they naturally started isolating and bullying him. The boy living at the teacher’s house was the ringleader. He would cover his nose and say Shen Mu smelled bad. At the time, people didn’t see this as school bullying; to the children, it was just funny and fun. So everyone started saying Shen Mu smelled bad. Since the teacher never intervened, a group naturally formed, and not bullying Shen Mu made one seem uncooperative.
“People who walked past me would cover their noses and laugh exaggeratedly, saying, ‘You really stink,'” Shen Mu imitated their tone. “When I told the teacher, she just threw back, ‘Flies don’t land on seamless eggs. Why doesn’t he bully anyone else but you?’ Later, she stopped grading my homework. I would hand it in, and she wouldn’t correct it. Then she would call my parents and say I wasn’t doing my homework every day.”
“During a class test, she only gave me half a sheet of paper; the back was blank. Then, when my dad came to pick me up, she said my foundation was too poor, so she only gave me half a test, and I was still slower than everyone else. She wouldn’t grade my score, and eventually stopped grading my papers altogether.”
Jiang Chengxuan tightened his arms around him. “What about your parents? Shouldn’t they have known what kind of person their child was? Didn’t they notice something was wrong?”
Shen Mu gently shook his head. “People from their generation had an almost blind respect for teachers. A teacher’s word was gospel; how could it be wrong? They only thought I was disobedient and causing trouble for the teacher.”
“I remember one time, my dad was called to school, and he came back looking terrible. He asked me, ‘What exactly did you do at school? Why does the teacher say you are incorrigible?’ No matter what I said, he didn’t believe me, thinking I was just making excuses. After that, I stopped trying to explain.”
“It’s not that they didn’t love me, but in their framework, a teacher’s authority was absolute. They believed a strict teacher produces brilliant students, and the teacher’s strictness was for my own good.”
Jiang Chengxuan was silent for a moment, feeling a dull ache in his heart. He couldn’t imagine how Shen Mu had faced that malice and isolation alone, especially when the family that should have protected him failed to give him enough trust and support. He kissed Shen Mu’s temple. “And then?”
“And then,” Shen Mu’s tone became lighter, “I did very well on the final exam. The papers were graded by the entire grade level team, so she couldn’t say anything. The next semester, I had a different teacher who was very kind to me.”
“What about the classmates who bullied you?”
“They grew up a year, and everyone became a bit more sensible, I guess. Later, everyone seemed to forget about it,” Shen Mu sighed. “Everyone else moved on. Whether I could move on or not, I had to.”
Shen Mu’s phrase, “Whether I could move on or not, I had to,” was said too lightly. A simple “kids being kids” could easily dismiss it, but how long does it take for someone who has been hurt to let go?
Jiang Chengxuan squeezed the back of his neck. “You don’t have to move on.”
Shen Mu smiled, resting his forehead against Jiang Chengxuan’s chest. “Jiang Chengxuan, are you feeling sorry for me?”
“Yes,” Jiang Chengxuan said. “My heart aches, and I’m furious.”
Shen Mu rubbed his back. “Don’t be angry, don’t be angry. It’s all in the past. I cursed her too. But that experience did make me distrustful of authority. When a teacher who is supposed to protect you is hurting you, you subconsciously start to doubt everything that seems correct. Including society’s definition of normal. Everyone said boys should like girls, and I started thinking, is it really abnormal for a boy to like a boy? After all, if a teacher can treat a student like that, what meaning does ‘normal’ even have?”
Jiang Chengxuan listened quietly, gently running his fingers through Shen Mu’s hair.
Shen Mu’s voice gradually dropped. “Thinking about it now, those thoughts were pretty childish. Maybe it was that rebellious psychology that made me accept my sexual orientation earlier.”
Shen Mu’s breathing gradually became steady and long, but Jiang Chengxuan was wide awake.
Shen Mu once said that he didn’t believe in completeness or perfection. Perfection was like a warm spring breeze that touched everyone but bypassed him alone.
Jiang Chengxuan hadn’t quite understood why Shen Mu held such a pessimistic view. Now he understood completely. For someone who had been hurt, there was no one who could make him believe the world was beautiful. Yet, Shen Mu hadn’t become radical or gloomy; he hadn’t lost the capacity to love.
Shen Mu was always resilient and strong, needing to depend on no one.
Jiang Chengxuan sighed softly, held him close, and closed his eyes to sleep.