Luo Zhiyu had been so focused on walking just now that he hadn’t paid attention to anything else. It wasn’t until they stopped that he realized Xiao Yan hadn’t taken him along the usual route they walked together after class.
He had been here before. This was the little path in the old campus—the place where he’d taken a fall last semester and ended up stupid as a rock.
The streetlights along the road had been there for years. Their faint glow was no brighter than the stars in the distant sky.
When the school had been cracking down on students dating earlier, teachers had often patrolled this area. Now that the fuss had died down, hardly anyone came here anymore.
The chill of the night slowly seeped in. Luo Zhiyu pulled his school uniform jacket tighter around himself, realizing that Xiao Yan had been right to insist on watching him put his clothes on earlier. He didn’t know when it had started, but Xiao Yan seemed to have developed a fondness for keeping an eye on all the little details of his daily life.
Two high school boys walked toward the residential area, stepping through patches of fragmented light.
“Did I hurt you just now?” Xiao Yan guided Luo Zhiyu around an abandoned manhole cover.
This wasn’t Luo Zhiyu’s fault. Xiao Yan was simply too afraid of wanting something he could never have. He shouldn’t have used his pheromones to suppress Luo Zhiyu. Even with a compatibility of zero, they were still an alpha’s pheromones, and Luo Zhiyu might have found them uncomfortable.
Like every other alpha, he had spent more than a decade using social conditioning and education to conceal his own vicious instincts. But whenever Luo Zhiyu was involved, every layer of civilized restraint that kept those instincts hidden vanished in an instant.
“Not really. You don’t have to think it’s your fault.” Luo Zhiyu shook his head. “It was just… a little unexpected, I guess.”
It was like getting hit on the head out of nowhere by an orange.
The last time Xiao Yan had been this fierce with him was during his rut that day. The only difference was that back then, it was his pheromones that had been fierce; today, it was Xiao Yan himself.
Luo Zhiyu didn’t ask why Xiao Yan had brought him down this particular path, one that held special meaning for them. He had been the one to make the first move and test the waters today, so whatever reaction Xiao Yan had, he would accept it unconditionally.
He had a vague feeling that Xiao Yan had something to ask him. There were things he wanted to ask Xiao Yan, too. But the surroundings were too quiet, and neither of them could find the right moment to begin.
This path was simply rough going, not a detour. It wouldn’t delay their return to the dorms at all, which meant they didn’t actually have much time left to talk.
“I don’t want to be fierce with you.” As a way of comforting an omega, Xiao Yan instinctively patted Luo Zhiyu’s cheeks twice.
“You can be fierce with me. I don’t think you’re annoying.” Luo Zhiyu rejected Xiao Yan’s words. “I told you, I brought it on myself.”
“That’s because I’ve never really been fierce with you,” Xiao Yan said. “No one has ever been able to bully you, not since you were little. I’m afraid you’ll hate me.”
“You say that as if you’ve never bullied me before. Don’t think I don’t know what a little menace you are after peeling off your orange skin. You alphas…” Luo Zhiyu shook his head, correcting himself as if denying his own words. “No, you’re different from other alphas. I’m not talking about pheromones.”
Without warning, Luo Zhiyu stopped walking. He still had a grip on Xiao Yan’s hand and didn’t let go. Xiao Yan gave a gentle tug, but when he couldn’t pull free, he stopped, too.
The little hooligan’s patience lasted only a few minutes.
“If you have something to ask, then ask. We’ll ask each other at the same time,” Luo Zhiyu proposed. “Question-and-answer mode. No open-ended questions. Give me two options, and I can only answer with one word. No lying, no follow-up questions. If that doesn’t work, we can settle it with a fight. That’s the most efficient way.”
“Works for me.” It was exactly Luo Zhiyu’s style of solving problems—and the approach best suited to the two of them.
A simple yes-or-no choice would shut down every ambiguous interpretation from the very beginning.
“You told me to give you a reason why I come to wait for you after class every day.” Xiao Yan repeated the message Luo Zhiyu had sent him on WeChat more than ten minutes earlier. “You weren’t just saying that offhandedly, were you?”
“No.” He hadn’t said it casually at all. He’d acted on a sudden impulse, with another purpose in mind.
After answering, Luo Zhiyu posed his own question. “Are pheromones important to you?”
“No.” Xiao Yan shook his head. This question felt all too familiar. Luo Zhiyu was seeking an answer to something in an almost identical way.
Luo Zhiyu had asked so many people today and received so many different answers. Yet in the end, the answer he liked best was still that single word from Xiao Yan: No.
Now it was Xiao Yan’s turn to ask.
“You deliberately acted like a hooligan today, didn’t you? Yes or no?”
Luo Zhiyu: “…”
“Why do you have to put it so harshly? How was I acting like a hooligan?” Luo Zhiyu abandoned the rules. He took a step back, intending to lean against a tree by the roadside to give himself a little more confidence. “I was just testing…”
“Testing what?” Xiao Yan pressed him relentlessly. “Finish what you were saying.”
One refused to answer, while the other kept asking follow-up questions. Both of them had broken the rules.
“One last question.” Luo Zhiyu dodged the issue, turning his gaze away. “Think carefully before you ask.”
“What happens if we break the rules again?” Xiao Yan was more concerned about that.
“If we break the rules again, you can do whatever you want with me, okay?” Luo Zhiyu had been the first to break them just now. He was the one in the wrong.
“I’ll give you two options, and you answer with one word. Right?” Xiao Yan confirmed the rules with him once more.
“Right, right, right.” Luo Zhiyu was busy thinking of his question and hadn’t given the rules much thought.
“I’ve got it.” There was dust on the tree trunk. Xiao Yan caught the front of Luo Zhiyu’s school uniform and pulled him back. Luo Zhiyu hadn’t expected the movement and nearly collided with his chest. “Should Zhiliǎo ask first?”
Their few vague questions had created just the right atmosphere. Through fragments of words, they were gradually trying to decipher each other’s feelings.
As if under a spell, Luo Zhiyu asked the question he cared about most—
“Is Luo Zhiyu someone else?”
“Yes or no?”
This was what he most wanted to know, but taken on its own, the question was rather cryptic. Xiao Yan might not even understand what he was asking.
He wanted to keep talking and explain what had led him to ask that question, but Xiao Yan gently pressed his index finger against Luo Zhiyu’s lips, stopping the explanation before it could leave his mouth.
“Do you want to explain first, or would you rather hear my question?” Xiao Yan asked. “You choose.”
The man had shut down his explanation, then pretended to be considerate by offering him a choice. Dissatisfied, Luo Zhiyu opened his mouth and bit Xiao Yan’s fingertip.
“Fine. Go ahead.”
The old streetlights could illuminate only a small semicircle of ground beneath their feet. Standing with Xiao Yan in the orange-yellow glow, Luo Zhiyu suddenly felt as though there were no world beyond the light.
“Luo Zhiyu.” Xiao Yan called him by his full name. “It’s my turn to ask. According to your rules, I give you two options, and you’re only allowed to answer with one word. Otherwise, it counts as breaking the rules.”
Luo Zhiyu gave a soft hum, waiting for Xiao Yan’s question.
“Stop asking whether our pheromones are compatible. Just like me, will you? ‘Good’ or ‘not good’?”