Chapter 35
by VolareHe knew almost all of Fang Xing’s friends. This man was dressed in a suit and tie, with unconcealed fatigue on his face. He looked older than them. Fang Xing shouldn’t have friends like this.
Seeing Fang Xing being pulled away, Zhou Jiayan reached out to grab his arm, but Fang Xing immediately dodged his hand.
Seeing Fang Xing’s movement, Jiang Chen was even less likely to let Zhou Jiayan grab him. He pulled Fang Xing back several steps and asked, “Xiao Xing, do you know him?”
“Of course he knows me! I’m his boyfriend!” Zhou Jiayan said anxiously, “Who the hell are you? Why are you here?”
Boyfriend? Isn’t Fang Xing straight?
Jiang Chen frowned and turned to look at Fang Xing, who shook his head, “He’s talking nonsense.”
Jiang Chen was only wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, the door was wide open, and he didn’t have time to dry his hair, shivering from the cold. Fang Xing immediately grabbed his coat from the sofa and draped it over Jiang Chen.
It was obvious that the two had a good relationship, which made Zhou Jiayan even more anxious, his eyes turning red. “Xingxing, who is he? Why are you being so nice to him?”
Fang Xing looked at him coldly, “It’s none of your business. Get out of my house.”
“I won’t!” Zhou Jiayan pouted, looking like he was about to cry. “I won’t leave. Explain it to me. Who is he?! You brought a man home while I was gone, and I didn’t say anything. Why are you kicking me out like this! I’m not leaving!”
Jiang Chen looked at this tall guy, over 1.8 meters, dressed in a suit and shiny leather shoes, tears welling up in his eyes, as if he could burst into tears on the spot if he said another word. It was the first time he had seen someone portray maturity and childishness at the same time.
He looked back at Fang Xing in surprise. Seeing Zhou Jiayan like that, Fang Xing gritted his teeth and said to him, “This is my house. I can let whoever I want come here. If you don’t leave, I’ll call your sister and ask her to take you back!”
Such an elementary school way of threatening.
Zhou Jiayan immediately stopped talking, as if he was really afraid of his sister, but he still looked at Jiang Chen and refused to move. He had endured not seeing him for two months, rushing to finish his work in the previous month and coming to find him without even going home. He saw a man coming out of his bathroom after taking a shower as soon as he entered the door. He had already restrained his temper by not laying his hands on him. How could he just leave without understanding what was going on!
“Then tell me who he is first!” Zhou Jiayan had an air of sitting down and refusing to leave unless he told him. “Even if you call my sister, I won’t leave until I figure out who he is!”
Jiang Chen might not have cared about this kind of misunderstanding before, but now it was different. He had Ling Sheng. His male ethics made him not want to spread even a little bit of gossip, so he quickly clarified, “Xiao Xing and I are good friends.”
Zhou Jiayan sized him up and down, his eyes full of suspicion. “Just good friends? Xiao Xing is so good, don’t you have any ulterior motives?”
“He’s straight!” Fang Xing couldn’t bear it any longer. “Zhou Jiayan, don’t assume everyone is like you.”
Seeing Fang Xing speak, Zhou Jiayan’s tone changed, and he climbed up the pole faster than a snake. “I used to be straight too, didn’t I become gay for you? Xingxing, my ulterior motives for you are more than just that, I…”
Before he could finish speaking, his phone rang. Zhou Jiayan took it out, glanced at it, and hung up directly. Just as he was about to speak again, the phone rang again. He hung up again, and then the phone continued to ring relentlessly. After hanging up three times, Zhou Jiayan couldn’t help it and answered the call.
“You dare to hang up my phone! Three times! Zhou Jiayan, are you looking for death!”
Jiang Chen even heard the roar from the phone. He looked at Fang Xing, who looked calm.
Zhou Jiayan responded a few times and hung up immediately. He looked at Jiang Chen, still full of distrust. Jiang Chen also realized that Fang Xing probably had a not simple relationship with him, so he said directly, “I have a partner.”
He originally wanted to say that he had a boyfriend, but given the current situation, it was better not to say it.
Hearing this, he looked at Fang Xing again, who only thought that he was helping him out and didn’t take it to heart.
Zhou Jiayan still refused to give up. “How do I know if what you’re saying is true or false? No matter what, I won’t leave if he doesn’t leave today. What if you have designs on Xiaoxing? Let me tell you, he’s mine, don’t get any funny ideas…”
“Zhou Jiayan!” Fang Xing couldn’t bear it any longer. “No matter who he is, it’s none of your business. Don’t bother my life anymore!”
Zhou Jiayan looked extremely aggrieved. Seeing him protecting Jiang Chen so much, he was even more unwilling to leave. This time, he directly rejected the phone even after it rang three times, looking like he would never compromise.
Although Jiang Chen didn’t quite understand what was going on between the two, he roughly knew what was happening from this look. Moreover, he had always thought Zhou Jiayan looked familiar, and now he remembered, wasn’t this the young master of the Zhou family who was studying abroad?
How did he get involved with Fang Xing?
Seeing that Fang Xing was also very helpless, Jiang Chen took the lead in breaking the deadlock, “Xiao Xing, why don’t I go with him? Anyway, it’s not early, it’s just that the table hasn’t been cleared, you may have to clean it up alone.”
“Okay, I’ll leave when he leaves.” Zhou Jiayan said first, and his phone rang again at this time.
Fang Xing had a headache from Zhou Jiayan’s noise, and he felt a little embarrassed when he heard this. “Cleaning up the table is a small matter. You even bought me so much food. I don’t have to buy food for this whole week.”
In the end, Jiang Chen and Zhou Jiayan went downstairs together. Zhou Jiayan kept staring at him in the middle, asking him what his relationship with Fang Xing was. Jiang Chen was very helpless with this young master’s behavior, stirred up by a Zhou Jiayan.
Fang Xing called and apologized to him, but not for himself, but for Zhou Jiayan: “He’s a bit…outspoken, don’t take it to heart.”
“I won’t, what’s going on between you and Zhou Jiayan? From what you said, it seems like his family knows about it?” Jiang Chen asked Fang Xing.
Fang Xing lowered his head and thought for a while, his voice low, “Yeah.”
After a while, Fang Xing continued, “Three years ago, I liked him for a while. We didn’t contact each other in the middle. I suddenly met him when I was interning during the summer vacation, and then it became like this.”
To be honest, Jiang Chen really didn’t expect Fang Xing to be gay. He was a particularly inclusive person, and he was easy to talk to and gentle. Almost no one in the school had ever said anything bad about Fang Xing. He was a little sentimental, “I didn’t expect that you would like a boy.”
“I didn’t expect it either.” Fang Xing smiled, but there was some sadness in his eyes, “However, I don’t like him anymore. He has his life, and I have my own path. We were just ignorant when we were young. He will wake up after a while.”
Ignorant when we were young?
Jiang Chen suddenly thought of Ling Sheng.
Ling Sheng’s attitude towards him was often like indulging a child. Except for not being able to be public, he could almost satisfy him with anything. However, this growing possessiveness was out of control. After getting one candy, he would want a second one. After getting a second one, he would want to have them all.
“This person has some childish ideas, and he even made you make up an excuse that you have a partner.” Fang Xing didn’t like to trouble others the most. Today, he inexplicably pulled Jiang Chen into it. He was very embarrassed. “But he has no malicious intentions.”
Jiang Chen was wearing headphones, flipping through the photo album on his phone. Ling Sheng didn’t like to take pictures very much. Most of the photos on his phone were screenshots he took when they were video chatting, always with a gentle smile, looking at him with slightly curved eyes.
It was as if he knew that this expression looked good, as if he knew that he liked to see him like this the most.
Jiang Chen naturally said, “Xiao Xing, I didn’t make it up, I actually have a partner.”
Now it was Fang Xing’s turn to be surprised.
Jiang Chen confessed to his friend, “It’s a man, the boss of my internship company.”
Fang Xing was silent for a moment, his tone a little flustered, “You…were you taken advantage of?”
Jiang Chen was stunned for a while, then suddenly laughed.
Fang Xing on the other side also reacted and laughed, “No, I misunderstood, how could you…”
Jiang Chen actually just wanted to find someone to talk to. Xu Peiya was too gossipy and not a good person to confide in, while Fang Xing was just right. He originally wanted to find Fang Xing to chat today, but he was interrupted by Zhou Jiayan, but now that it was mentioned, he told him about himself and Ling Sheng, and Fang Xing listened quietly over there.
“At first, I thought that being with him was really happy, but the closer I get to him, the more I feel that there is still a distance between us.” Jiang Chen was actually a little confused.
He always wanted to get closer to him, closer, preferably tightly together, without any gaps, but the distance between them was controlled by Ling Sheng. Closer, farther, he seemed to be able to adjust with ease.
This calmness made him feel uneasy. Can a truly invested relationship really be so calm? Then if one day, he did something wrong, and he didn’t want this relationship anymore, could he also leave at any time?
After all, he was very good to him when he was with Wu Xia.
Fang Xing was a very good listener. After listening, he didn’t evaluate anything, but said gently, “Achen, do you think he likes you?”
“Like.”
On this point, Jiang Chen had never doubted it.
“Then what are you uneasy about?”
What is it?
It was how much he liked him, not making their relationship public, even if they were intimate, he felt that he was reserved, just like…just like he could leave at any time.
“Then what do you think is the reason why he doesn’t want to go public?”
Jiang Chen thought about it and said truthfully, “He’s worried about my family, worried that the label of homosexuality will affect my family and my studies.”
“What about him?”
Jiang Chen didn’t speak, he was thinking about the meaning behind this sentence.
Fang Xing was thoughtful and more mature than his peers since he was a child, and he could see many things more clearly.
“Achen, I don’t know what Director Ling is thinking, but if it were me, facing a lover who is seven years younger than me, instead of doubting how much he likes me now, I might think more about how long this relationship can last.”
Twenty-one years old is an age where passion can swallow everything, but if there is only passion, how long can the excitement brought by hormones and dopamine last?
Will Ling Sheng be the one to leave first?
Fang Xing paused after saying this before saying again, “Maybe it’s because I’m a more pessimistic person, I’m just saying my thoughts, just listen to them.”
Jiang Chen remembered the only request Ling Sheng had made to him that day.
“Be honest with me about your feelings at every moment, I hope that every day I bring you is beautiful.”
Jiang Chen felt a sense of sudden clarity, as if he had gotten a little closer to Ling Sheng, and he felt a lot more at ease, and said to Fang Xing, “Xiao Xing, you are really my lucky star.”
He didn’t go home immediately, but went to Ling Sheng’s house. He knew Ling Sheng’s password. After entering, he found that the house was clean and tidy. The aunt should have been asked to come over to clean it up specially after he left. The pots, pans, and various seasonings that Wu Xia had bought were also sealed and placed neatly.
He first sat on the sofa for a while, and then went into the master bedroom. He just suddenly missed him very much, so he thought of coming here to sit, but he found a piece of clothing on the neatly folded quilt.