If he’d had the money, he would have rather paid for it himself. But unfortunately, he couldn’t fork out the ridiculous 1.68 million that had been spent overnight.
1.68 million yuan…
It was such a shockingly auspicious number that it could give someone a heart attack.10 He Yu had fucked him all night, but it was Xie Qingcheng who had to pay the 1.68 million yuan for the alcohol, service, and room?
What exactly did he order? A fucking massage service?!
That bastard had even fucking run away, just like that.
“Hello, the user you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try again later…”
Xie Qingcheng irritably ended the call. He went to He Yu’s WeChat profile, forcefully tapped out some words, and then hit send.
To his surprise, WeChat immediately sounded with a notification. He’d been about to toss his phone aside, but he paused—and his eyes widened, reflecting a bright red exclamation mark on the screen.
“The message you sent has been rejected by the recipient.”
Xie Qingcheng stared at the screen in grim disbelief. Now he’d really gone blind.
He Yu had blocked him?
“Fuck,” Xie Qingcheng muttered in a low voice. He was so hoarse he sounded like he was about to start emitting smoke.
He Yu. Actually. Had. The. Nerve. To. Block. Him?!
It was a blessing that Xie Qingcheng didn’t really use social media, otherwise he would have realized that He Yu’s actions were remarkably similar to those of some particularly contemptible youths who deleted the other person’s contact information seconds after a one-night stand.
But this didn’t stop Xie Qingcheng from becoming enraged. After such a disgusting turn of events last night, shouldn’t he be the one blocking He Yu instead? Did He Yu even have the right to block him?
Xie Qingcheng very rarely lost control of himself, but at this moment, when he threw his phone onto the sink with a clack and lifted his eyes, the man looking back at him from the mirror seemed as ferocious as a ravaged beast that had been driven into a corner.
“He Yu…!”
Meanwhile, Young Big Shot He had genuinely forgotten about paying the bill.
By now, his madness had already subsided slightly, and the effects of the alcohol had likewise worn off. But his mind was still in turmoil.
When he had woken up in the morning and found himself sleeping on his stomach, he could sense that something wasn’t quite right. As soon as his eyes refocused, he saw Xie Qingcheng lying under him on the mattress in an utterly wretched condition. He was sprawled out on top of Xie Qingcheng, having slept the entire night with his face tucked into the crook of the man’s neck. His posture was just like that of a wounded fledgling dragon that had folded its wings and curled up its tail to rest, having flown arduously across the sea and finally found a warm, humid lair. The little dragon had been so tired, thirsty, and lonely on its journey, so after drinking its fill of water at long last, it clicked its snout, settled into its new den, and slept until daybreak in perfect satisfaction.
But upon waking up, the young dragon was struck dumb. Those shattered, frantic memories from the night before rushed back like a wild snowstorm.
He must have had a nightmare or been possessed by a demon. Or perhaps that Plum Fragrance 59 that he downed wasn’t liquor but a magical potion that could rid one of homophobia with just a couple of sips. Otherwise, how could he have done something so completely unhinged with such fervent passion? That was a man!
He had done those things to a man…
He Yu looked down at Xie Qingcheng’s face and reached out a hand to turn it toward him, his fingertip brushing against Xie Qingcheng’s bloody lips.
Although he was still unconscious, his lips trembled slightly as though responding to He Yu’s touch. Xie Qingcheng looked like a crumpled sheet of tissue paper, stark white with a few spots of cinnabar on its surface. That handsome, chiseled face utterly lacked any trace of femininity…
He Yu scrutinized it for a long time with an indescribable feeling in his heart.
Disbelief.
Madness.
Loathing.
But such secrets of the flesh were buried deep below the surface, yet to be uncovered. He Yu looked at Xie Qingcheng like a dragon gazing down at a human sacrifice on a bed of rock. The dragon detested humans, so it should have driven him away or devoured him in a single bite. It should never have madly rampaged onto the bed with that human in tow.
Now He Yu was like a strange creature gradually leaving madness and coming back to his wits. He looked over the crimes that he had wrought, his eyes reflecting the image of the human that he had tormented to the point of devastation.
Normally, he found homosexuality incredibly disgusting. Even he himself had no idea what had happened to him. Had he really been so angry, so drunk, that he had completely lost his mind? No matter how violent or impetuous he had been, he shouldn’t have used this man’s body to vent his emotions that way.
His illness caused his heart to become desensitized and cold, but it felt as though he had fallen even deeper into an ice cave. He sat up on the bed and looked at the chaotic mess surrounding him, his mind filled with the irrepressible images of Xie Qingcheng with his legs tangled around his waist, falling to pieces before his eyes, full of suffering and desire.
He had really done those things.
He Yu’s mind froze over as he stared numbly at Xie Qingcheng’s unconscious face. The excitement of having doled out his revenge swirled around his brain even as looking back on his overindulgent descent into madness left him soaked in a chilly mire of regret. How could he have…
He felt extremely disquieted, but ultimately, another burst of resentment welled up within him. Xie Qingcheng only had himself to blame for this. Who asked that man to deceive him for seven years—and then another four after that…?
So, while on the one hand, He Yu was disgusted…on the other, a flower of malice silently unfurled in his heart. It suddenly struck him that he ought to take something as a memento of this crazed, sinful entanglement.
After all, this had been his first time. He wouldn’t want to see Xie Qingcheng again; by the same token, he imagined that Xie Qingcheng would hate him to the bone for this and be just as unwilling to see him. And so, after thinking it over, he finally dug out his cell phone from the clothes that were tangled up like the cast-off molted skin of a snake, pointed the camera at the still-unconscious man, and took a few pictures of his soundly sleeping face.
At this very moment, He Yu was looking at the photos he’d taken of Xie Qingcheng’s sleeping visage. The man in the pictures looked extremely weak and exhausted, with clear bite marks on the broken skin of his lips. It was obvious at a glance what he had been doing with someone else before falling asleep—as was the fact that he had been on the receiving end.
As He Yu stared, his ruthless, unfeeling mind kept replaying how destroyed Xie Qingcheng had looked beneath him the night before and the handful of hoarse moans that Xie Qingcheng hadn’t managed to stifle. He thought coldly, what sexual apathy? How many times did he lose himself last night? As expected, everything about Xie Qingcheng was fake.
But for some reason, a warmth started to seep into He Yu’s blood.
As he was lost in thought, his phone began to ring. An unknown landline number was calling him.
“Hello?” he answered.
A voice came from the other end of the line. It was the same voice that had sounded so pleasantly low and raspy when it cried out last night—but right now, it was as cold as hoarfrost.
“He Yu,” Xie Qingcheng said, “have you no fucking sense of shame?”