Rent...
Lu Yuxing was lost in thought for a moment.
Had they decided to live together before? No.
What was the reason? Shang Jue had said he didn’t like living in dorms, yet he still moved out...
— Why did he move out?
— Heh... because he had bad luck and lost the competition.
Was it... because of my competition?
Did I want him to move out? For what reason?
No... If that transfer record was for the rent, then we didn’t fight before? I also didn’t delete his contact information...
This means that transfer record was very likely their... first message. The only strong evidence that could prove his relationship with Shang Jue was that transfer record.
Lu Yuxing stared blankly at Shang Jue’s face. The smile at the corners of Shang Jue's lips was restrained and faint.
That smile made Lu Yuxing feel something was off. He tried hard to suppress the urge to ask further questions, swallowing a series of questions down his throat, forcing them back.
Shang Jue raised an eyebrow in slight surprise.
He was ready to answer questions.
But whether to speak or not didn’t really matter.
As long as Lu Yuxing asked one more question, or Shang Jue explained one more sentence, their relationship would come to an end.
The study was surprisingly quiet.
After waiting for a while without hearing Lu Yuxing speak, Shang Jue turned his head back to continue reading.
The two of them seemed to be fine, remaining silent until nearly ten o'clock, mutually agreeing to not say another word.
When the clock struck ten, Lu Yuxing put down his pen and packed up his things.
Shang Jue accompanied him to the door, asking, "Do you want me to take you down, babe?"
Lu Yuxing mechanically curled the corners of his lips, replying softly, "No need."
Shang Jue nodded, watching Lu Yuxing enter the elevator.
The moment the elevator door closed, Lu Yuxing's smile faded, and his expression gradually turned grim.
He had been deceived.
There was no room for turning back.
Upstairs, the heating in Shang Jue’s study was so hot it nearly clouded his ability to think, but the answer was simply too easy; he didn’t even bother writing out the proof.
As he stepped out of the building, the biting cold of winter night air chilled his overheated brain.
His chaotic thoughts began to calm down. Lu Yuxing bent slightly, pressing his palm against his stomach that ached from anxiety, stopping in his tracks.
Damn...
He was deceived?
Why deceive me?
He held onto the known answer and retraced the process.
He suddenly recalled a sentence Lin Xuying had said before.
“Many girls at our school like you; maybe one of them is a pervert, so be careful, Lu Ge… Don’t tell me you lost your memory and got tricked.”
Like. Because he likes me?
Apart from this reason, there probably wasn’t any other.
Looking back now, Lu Yuxing remembered that many of the memories he hadn’t thought deeply about contained numerous contradictions.
For example, Shang Jue had lied to him, saying he was “bent”… but which straight guy who was “bent” would willingly go to a gay bar?
Shang Jue liked men in the first place. Did he like... me?
Lu Yuxing pressed his lips together, sorting through the tangled memories to find a seemingly clear line. Various odd coincidences started to make sense along this line.
Why was his first reaction upon seeing Shang Jue in the hospital one of resistance? Because he didn’t like guys.
Why did he want Shang Jue to move out of the dorm? For the same reason.
If Shang Jue moved out of Room 323 because of him, then it was quite normal for him to voluntarily propose sharing the rent.
Shang Jue hadn’t mentioned how much they would split the rent, but Lu Yuxing estimated that based on his personality, he would probably bear at least half.
Their campus was in the suburbs, and the rent prices were relatively low, but Shang Jue's place was not small. The rent surely wasn’t just a little over a thousand.
Yet Shang Jue had him transfer such an ambiguous amount... What other reason could there be besides liking him?
“Because I’ve been watching you for too long, babe.”
He had liked him for a long time, so he was well aware of Lu Yuxing's preferences.
Now that he had found the reason, Lu Yuxing gritted his teeth, feeling far from relaxed.
No one likes being deceived, and his tolerance for lies was lower than that of ordinary people.
Thinking that his feelings for Shang Jue had started with one party’s deception made Lu Yuxing feel as if there was a thorn stuck in his throat.
It was as if a beautiful relationship had been ruthlessly filled with a grain of sand from the very beginning. Unless it transformed into a pearl oyster, he would have to endure the pain of being pricked for a lifetime.
If Shang Jue had pursued him in a normal way, he would definitely have agreed. Why... why did it have to be done this way?
Lu Yuxing was furious yet helpless.
His feelings for Shang Jue were in a rapidly growing phase, and the thought of breaking up was extinguished the moment it appeared; he could only furiously scold himself.
He suppressed his anger and returned to Room 323.
It wasn’t yet lights out, and the lights in the dorm were still on.
As he entered, Ge Zhicheng was grasping the ladder handle, preparing to climb into bed. He turned around when he heard the door open.
Lu Yuxing’s lips turned pale as he glanced at him, unexpectedly speaking, “Did I used to hate Shang Jue?”
Ge Zhicheng was so surprised he almost lost his grip and fell off the bed.
Seeing his reaction, Lu Yuxing knew the answer. He silently returned to his own spot.
Ge Zhicheng hesitated, saying, “Lu Ge, did you remember something? I didn’t mean to hide it from you. The main thing is that Shang Jue took care of you for quite a while after you lost your memory, so I didn’t want to say your relationship wasn’t good... Plus, you guys are fine now, right?”
“Yeah. It’s nothing, you can sleep,” Lu Yuxing was no longer in the mood to ask more.
Moreover, he wasn’t the kind of person to share everything, especially regarding private relationships; Ge Zhicheng and the others probably wouldn’t know the full story.
“... Oh.”
Lu Yuxing poured himself a cup of hot water and drank it. The cramping pain in his stomach eased slightly.
He lay down in bed, but he couldn’t fall asleep until late at night.
In the early morning, Lu Yuxing finally drifted into a shallow sleep, and perhaps because his sleep was so unstable, he dreamt for the first time in a while.
He dreamed of Shang Jue’s study. The conversation they had the previous night replayed in his dream.
But in the dream, he chose to press for answers, and after Shang Jue admitted to his lies, he directly proposed a breakup.
Shang Jue accepted calmly, without an apology, and instead, he laughed lightly, calling him a jerk who was harder to seduce than a rock.
Lu Yuxing looked at him, unresponsive.
The study, illuminated by warm lights, suddenly began to distort and transform into bizarre fragments.
In the previous moment, someone was scolding him, but now, he turned to see a bar filled with neon lights, where a familiar face was passionately kissing another man with a blurred appearance.
Lu Yuxing’s heart ignited with fury.
He didn’t know where he was or that he had already broken up with that person.
Instinctively, he reached out, violently pulling Shang Jue away from that faceless man.
The scene changed once more, transforming the world into pure white, as if a heavy snow had fallen. He found himself in the snow, holding a body even brighter than the white snow. His face buried in the person’s neck, the only bright color in his vision was a small, vermilion mole on the right collarbone.
Lu Yuxing lowered his head, biting down on that beautiful red spot. He heard the other person’s disordered breaths and a voice tinged with laughter: “Hmm... baby...”
Unable to resist, he lifted his head and met a pair of fox-like eyes glistening with water.
Those eyes stared at him for a moment before suddenly narrowing into a smile: “Sorry, I called the wrong person.”
“...”
Lu Yuxing probably woke up from his own anger.
For the first time, he realized he could actually get out of bed in a bad mood, feeling as if his lungs were being painfully squeezed by the words “called the wrong person.”
When he finally woke up, his stomach felt even worse than before he fell asleep.
Gasping from the pain, he turned his head and saw two people staring at him with strange looks.
Lu Yuxing: “...”
Suddenly, he felt more alert.
Ge Zhicheng and Lin Xuying were looking at him as if he were a rare specimen, making Lu Yuxing think he hadn’t fully woken up yet.
When he opened his eyes, Ge Zhicheng exclaimed, “Wow, Lu Ge, this is the first time I’ve seen you sleep in!”
Lu Yuxing was taken aback, glancing at his phone—it was still about ten minutes until class...
He rubbed his face vigorously, feeling his mind start to drift, the order inside and outside his body completely disrupted.
Ge Zhicheng said, “I called you about ten minutes ago, but it seems you didn’t hear me! Yingzi and I almost thought you were dead.”
“...”
Lin Xuying asked, “Lu Ge, you’re not running a fever, are you?”
Lu Yuxing replied, “No.” The moment he spoke, his voice came out hoarse.
Ge Zhicheng exclaimed, “Not yet! You sound like you’re about to lose your voice!”
Lu Yuxing cleared his throat awkwardly, but it didn’t help much.
Lin Xuying expressed concern, “The teacher will call names in this class. Should we help you ask for a leave, Lu Ge? You should rest well.”
Lu Yuxing shook his head, forcing himself to say in his hoarse voice, “No need, you two go to class. I’ll be there later.”
The two of them had to stop by the cafeteria for breakfast, and it was time to head out, so they exchanged hesitant glances and finally left.
Only then did Lu Yuxing pull off the covers and get out of bed, not having time to wait for his body to settle down. He hurriedly dressed and washed up.
He felt like something was definitely off... On the first night after discovering his feelings had been betrayed, he had an utterly chaotic spring dream.
For the first time, he experienced the chaos of getting out of bed, and Lu Yuxing rushed through his morning routine, making it out the door in the final minutes.
However, he was still late when he entered the classroom, receiving a sharp glare from the professor who had already started the lecture.
Shang Jue was leaning on one hand, listening to the class, and looked surprised when he saw Lu Yuxing walk in.
He thought this guy had been too shaken up last night to come to class this morning...
The first row had plenty of empty seats, so Lu Yuxing immediately sat down next to Shang Jue.
As for whether he chose to sit there himself or just didn't want to keep searching for a seat under the professor's watchful eye, Shang Jue couldn’t tell.
He glanced at Lu Yuxing’s disheveled hair and slightly reddened eyelids, looking either listless or overly excited.
After only a few seconds of looking, the person being watched suddenly turned to him, catching his gaze just as it was about to retreat.
Shang Jue blinked, then shamelessly curled his fox-like eyes up at him.
Lu Yuxing: “...”
In an instant, Lu Yuxing's feelings became complicated, and his stomach hurt even more.
His lips gently pressed together, the pale color that had lingered since last night failing to recover.
Shang Jue began writing on the paper.
—Not feeling well?
Lu Yuxing replied.
—No.
Shang Jue twirled the pen between his fingers and wrote another line.
—Didn’t sleep well, baby?
Lu Yuxing fell silent for a moment.
—Yeah.
Didn’t sleep well; neither did I. Shang Jue thought to himself, silently turning back around. Under his neatly arranged bangs, his pupils appeared somewhat vacant.
He had stayed up all night waiting for Lu Yuxing's breakup message and hadn’t slept a wink. Now, his head throbbed painfully...
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