Xie Qingcheng reached out a hand to feel He Yu’s forehead. His hand was slightly cool and felt indescribably refreshing on He Yu’s burning skin. Instinctively, He Yu let out a sigh, his eyes falling half-closed as he subconsciously leaned forward and pressed his head gently into Xie Qingcheng’s hand. It felt so wonderful that, for a moment, he couldn’t even finish the rest of what he was going to say.
“Little devil, you have a fever.” Xie Qingcheng leaned over He Yu where he was sitting cross-legged on the sofa and took the thin laptop from his lap.
He Yu snapped out of his daze and stopped in the middle of rubbing his head against Xie Qingcheng’s hand. “My computer…”
Xie Qingcheng had no plan to return the computer to him. “It’s just a first-day-of-school celebration. You’ve come down with an extremely high fever. Why didn’t you say anything to anyone?”
“It’s fine. You don’t need to worry so much about such a small thing.” He Yu tried once again to reach for the laptop in Xie Qingcheng’s hand.
Xie Qingcheng held up the laptop even higher. “You’re my patient. If I don’t worry about you, then who will?”
He Yu didn’t reply to that, but he reached over the back of the sofa to grab Xie Qingcheng’s arm. He glared at Xie Qingcheng and opened his mouth a few times to refute him, but he couldn’t find the right words to say.
The two of them remained in their respective positions—one sitting and reaching out to grab the other’s arm, and the other standing while looking back at him. An evening breeze swept over the pure-white sofa as rich light trickled in through the slightly open window, giving the scene the appearance of an oil painting.
Perhaps in that moment, this sick, lonely boy was so pathetic that he falsely perceived a hint of softness in Xie Qingcheng’s ever chilly and emotionless eyes.
“He Yu,” he said. “You’re much too tense. There’s no way you can do everything perfectly.”
“Doctor Xie, you’re only a doctor,” He Yu argued. “You don’t have to consider these sorts of things for me. Give me back my laptop. I need to finish what I was doing.”
The two of them stared each other down. In the end, Xie Qingcheng lifted the laptop and tapped it gently against He Yu’s forehead. “Doctor’s orders.”
Then Xie Qingcheng’s gaze dropped downward, inadvertently sweeping over the sliver of skin peeking out from under He Yu’s sleeve.
He frowned. “What’s wrong with your hand?”
As if electrocuted, He Yu immediately withdrew his hand and tried to tug his sleeve back into place. But Xie Qingcheng was already a step ahead of him. He reached out to grab He Yu’s arm at once and pushed his long sleeve up…
…For a moment, neither of them spoke.
At last, Xie Qingcheng asked, “You got a tattoo?”
“No.”
“So that isn’t tattoo ink on your wrist?” When He Yu didn’t reply, Xie Qingcheng continued, “Are you looking for trouble? How old are you again? Does your school even allow this?”
He Yu didn’t say a word, but his invisible dragon’s tail began to thump against the ground in restless irritation.
Xie Qingcheng’s gaze traveled back and forth between He Yu’s wrist and his face. After a while, something seemed to occur to him. “He Yu, are you…copying me?”
This time, he had truly stomped on the little dragon’s tail. A stricken expression overtook the boy’s face, but he couldn’t manage a single word in self-defense. He could only glare daggers at Xie Qingcheng, his face twisting up as though he’d eaten some fatally poisonous mushroom.
“Are you copying me?” Xie Qingcheng pressed.
He Yu leapt up from the sofa in an attempt to flee. “The tattoo artist designed it. Who’s copying you? You’re not handsome at all, you’re not good-looking, and I don’t like your taste either…”
But he had overestimated his physical condition. He hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps before his legs went weak underneath him. It felt like he was walking on cotton. Then the world suddenly spun around him, and by the time he got his bearings, Xie Qingcheng had already picked him up around the waist just like when He Yu was little and hoisted him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
The problem was that back then, He Yu had only reached Xie Qingcheng’s knees. But now…
He whipped his head around, furiously flustered as he stopped feigning docility. Pinching the back of Xie Qingcheng’s neck, he yelled, “Put me down! This is too embarrassing…”
“If you don’t want me to suplex you, get your pointy little claws off my neck.”
“Put me down first! I’m already twelve!”
“I’m still older than you, even if you reverse the digits. No matter how tall you get, you’re just a little devil who’s still in junior high.”
“Xie Qingcheng!”
Xie Qingcheng paused for a beat. When he continued speaking, his words were as indifferent as ever, but his voice seemed to carry the faintest hint of a smile indicating that their strict doctor-patient relationship had crossed some boundary. “He Yu, I didn’t know you admired me so much.”
“Who are you saying admires you?!”
“You like Shelley?”
“No way! I like tombstones!”
The racket had lasted all the way to He Yu’s bedroom.
Even now, as an adult, He Yu had no idea whether that faint smile in Xie Qingcheng’s voice had just been his own fevered imagination, especially when so much time had passed and he could no longer remember many of the details all that well. But the one thing he could still clearly remember from that night was that after Xie Qingcheng had carried him back to his bedroom and given him a shot of antihistamine, he had gone out to the bedroom’s balcony and made a very long call to Lü Zhishu.
He Yu was lying on the bed, and he couldn’t hear what Xie Qingcheng was saying through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors. But he could see Xie Qingcheng lift a hand to rub repeatedly at his brow, like he was suppressing certain emotions as he spoke. By the end, Xie Qingcheng was clearly angry, hurling harsh reproaches at Lü Zhishu with a furious expression on his face.