Ren Yi secretly pinched his own arm and turned around. “Huh?”
“You called me upstairs for this, didn’t you?” Gong Yingxian crossed his arms over his chest. “How are you supposed to wash by yourself?”
“Uh, I…” Ren Yi imagined the scene and felt that there was no way he could keep his thoughts from wandering. But he couldn’t bear to give up an opportunity to have such intimate contact with Gong Yingxian either. After hesitating for a moment, he asked, “You don’t think I’m dirty?”
“I do.” Gong Yingxian answered without hesitation. “I’ll hold the showerhead and make sure you don’t get water on your wound. You wash yourself.” He paused, looking as though he were making a great sacrifice. “I can wipe around your neck for you.”
“Still… forget it.” Ren Yi gave an awkward laugh. “It’d be embarrassing to be naked.”
Gong Yingxian raised an eyebrow. “You’re a firefighter. Haven’t you ever showered in a communal bathhouse?”
Ren Yi was speechless. He had only gotten his own private bathroom after becoming a squad leader two years ago.
“Or are you embarrassed in front of me?” Gong Yingxian’s lips curved slightly. “Feeling inferior?”
Ren Yi straightened his chest and declared, “Are you kidding? If you insist on helping, I’ll give you the opportunity.”
Gong Yingxian lifted his chin. “Hurry up. I still have to go back to the precinct.” As he spoke, he took off his suit jacket.
As Ren Yi watched the way Gong Yingxian’s thick chest muscles were deliberately accentuated as he undressed, he couldn’t help swallowing.
“Give me a clean set of pajamas. Preferably new ones.”
“I only have training clothes.”
Gong Yingxian frowned. “Those clothes of yours that look like something a maintenance worker would wear?”
Ren Yi rolled his eyes. “Yes, those clothes that look like something a maintenance worker would wear.” It was no wonder other people disliked their uniforms; even they thought they were pretty ugly. Ren Yi took two clean sets from the cabinet, handing one to Gong Yingxian.
Gong Yingxian silently stared at the flame-blue firefighter training uniform in his hands. It had obviously been washed many times; the fabric was already somewhat wrinkled and misshapen, and it had clearly never been ironed.
“They’re all clean.” Ren Yi brought the set in his own hands to his nose and sniffed it. “They even smell nice.”
“You call the smell of cheap laundry detergent ‘nice’?” Gong Yingxian glared at him.
“Tsk, this is all I have. If you don’t want to wear it, are you going in there naked?”
Gong Yingxian hesitated.
That hesitation made Ren Yi nervous. Was this guy really planning to face him completely naked? No, no, he wasn’t ready! He would definitely embarrass himself!
Gong Yingxian reluctantly said, “Fine.”
Ren Yi’s heart gave a hard thump. He cautiously asked, “‘Fine’ means… wearing it… or not wearing it?”
Gong Yingxian threw the training uniform back at Ren Yi. “I’m not wearing this kind of thing.”
Ren Yi stared blankly at him, stammering, “Y-You… you’re really going to…!”
“We’re both men. So what?” Gong Yingxian glanced at his watch and urged him, “Can you hurry up?” As he spoke, he took off his watch as well and placed it on the table.
Ren Yi felt as if a fully grown stag were rampaging through his heart. He panicked. As a perfectly normal man, how was he supposed to calmly face this? Wasn’t this just torturing him? But if he refused, wouldn’t that make it even more obvious that he was trying to hide something?
Gong Yingxian, however, began taking off his clothes with complete composure.
Ren Yi steeled himself. “You can keep your underwear on. I have a new pair. A new pair for you.”
“Mm.”
Ren Yi picked up his training clothes and turned into the bathroom. He splashed his face twice with cold water, frantically telling himself: Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.
They were only showering together. He had lived in dormitories since high school and had showered in communal bathhouses countless times. What kind of scene hadn’t he seen? There was no way he would embarrass himself in his own bathroom. Absolutely not.
He took a deep breath, stripped off his clothes, and turned on the faucet.
A moment later, Gong Yingxian came in. “Is the water warm?”
“Mm.” Ren Yi took a deep breath and turned slightly, intending to hand the showerhead to Gong Yingxian. But the moment he saw Gong Yingxian’s strong, perfectly proportioned body, his entire body still shuddered. He quickly shoved the showerhead into Gong Yingxian’s hand and turned his back, afraid that Gong Yingxian would notice the abnormal flush on his face.
Gong Yingxian took the showerhead, unable to stop his gaze from sweeping from top to bottom over Ren Yi’s naked back. His long, lean frame, narrow waist, and perfectly proportioned muscles—every inch of him was filled with the vibrant beauty of strength.
Ren Yi’s body was very attractive, he thought.
The moment he realized what he was thinking, he found it unbelievable. He had never paid attention to other people’s appearance. It wasn’t that he couldn’t distinguish beauty from ugliness; it was simply that beauty and ugliness had never meant much to him. Cleanliness was far more important.
Yet now, he had actually had the thought that Ren Yi was good-looking.
He couldn’t understand where this emotion had come from. He felt confused, even troubled by it, and his breathing became somewhat hurried.
Ren Yi waited for a long time. “Hey? Come on, spray the water.” He didn’t turn around. He could barely maintain his composure this way, even though he really, really, really wanted to turn around and look—preferably to his heart’s content.
Gong Yingxian came back to himself. He forcibly suppressed the inexplicable thought in his heart, took two steps forward, and examined Ren Yi’s injury. “Once this wound heals, the discoloration will take at least two years to fade.”
“Then if I get a little tanner, no one will be able to see it, right?”
“Unless you tan until you become Black.” Gong Yingxian sprayed water onto Ren Yi’s back. “Wash.”
Ren Yi had no choice but to awkwardly start washing himself. He forced himself not to think about the person behind him, instead trying to think of things that would keep both his mind and body calm. As a result, his movements became extremely stiff, and he managed to make taking a shower look as awkward as if half his body were paralyzed.
But even without turning around, he could feel Gong Yingxian looking at him.
Obviously Gong Yingxian was looking at him, but it wasn’t an ordinary look. It was… he couldn’t describe the kind of gaze he could almost feel taking physical form. Perhaps it was all in his imagination, but he didn’t dare turn around to find out.
An image from a god’s-eye view suddenly surfaced in Ren Yi’s mind…
He shuddered violently and instinctively bent slightly at the waist, trying to hide his panic.
No. Think of something else. Think of… something scary.
Ren Yi gritted his teeth. He couldn’t care less about being scared anymore. He seriously recalled all the horror movies he had watched, imagining that somewhere he couldn’t see, there was something…
“Give me the towel.”
Gong Yingxian’s voice suddenly sounded beside Ren Yi’s ear.
That voice naturally carried an elegance and ethereal quality, as though it were always separated from the clamor of the mortal world by a layer of air. Its tone was pure and flawless, sometimes making one’s ears tingle just from hearing it. But when Ren Yi’s mind was full of ghosts and supernatural nonsense, a voice that beautiful and otherworldly could make a person’s body temperature drop three degrees.
Ren Yi was so startled that his heart seemed to skip a beat. His body jerked, his feet slipped, and he fell backward.
Gong Yingxian still had the showerhead in one hand and could only catch Ren Yi with the other. His own feet slipped as well. To keep them both from falling, he could only stagger backward several steps and brace his back against the wall, barely managing to steady himself.
For that instant, the air seemed to freeze. Neither of them even dared to breathe, while the shower water continued to splash noisily.
Ren Yi’s mind went completely blank.
Gong Yingxian only felt a fire suddenly ignite in his chest with a boom. An unfamiliar yet intense sensation struck his nerves. He had never experienced anything like it and had no way of determining what exactly he was feeling.
Then his scalp began to tingle, and his cheeks grew hot, like the aftereffect of drinking a glass of alcohol. He felt flustered and quickly said, “Aren’t you—aren’t you getting up?”
Ren Yi came back to his senses as if waking from a dream and hurriedly stood up. His hands and feet were at a loss, his mind completely disoriented, and he was even more afraid to turn around.
Gong Yingxian didn’t need Ren Yi to turn around. Looking at his flushed neck, he could already imagine how red his face must be right now. Gong Yingxian couldn’t help touching his own face, wondering whether his own face was also…
“I-I’m almost done washing. You—you could… maybe…”
“…Give me the towel.” Gong Yingxian emphasized his words, as if doing so could conceal his own panic.
Ren Yi still kept his back turned and handed him the towel.
Gong Yingxian took it and pretended to be composed as he scolded him, “You almost got water on your wound just now. Can’t you be more careful?” He used the wet towel to wipe the skin around the wound.
“The floor tiles are a little slippery…” Ren Yi said softly, his mind already a complete mess.
He was a firefighter who had seen all kinds of accidents and spent years going in and out of all kinds of dangerous places. As a commander in particular, the first requirement for their psychological resilience was to remain calm and composed in the face of unexpected situations.
If someone had told him before that he would become like a stunned fool, a clueless kid, simply because of the word “like”—constantly losing his composure—he would have scoffed at them.
But now?
He was panicking like an idiot.
And he was being so damn cowardly about it.
Gong Yingxian draped the towel over Ren Yi’s shoulder. “All right. Wash yourself.”
“Uh, okay.” Ren Yi felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from him. If Gong Yingxian stayed any longer, he was going to explode.
Gong Yingxian walked to the door, then turned around and asked, “You got my underwear wet. Where are the new ones?”
Ren Yi immediately felt his blood rush to his head. He forced himself to answer, “In the cabinet just now.”
Gong Yingxian gave Ren Yi one last deep look before closing the door and leaving.
Ren Yi let out a heavy sigh of relief. He suddenly felt completely drained. He rested his head weakly against the wall and slowly turned the valve to the left. The hot water spraying from the showerhead turned cold, and he drenched himself thoroughly with it.
Normally, Ren Yi finished his showers in five minutes, treating them like a quick battle. This time, he lingered inside for another twenty minutes. He stared at himself in the mirror for a long while, and only after confirming that there was indeed nothing unusual about him did he put on an energetic expression and walk out.
By then, Gong Yingxian had already gotten dressed. He was sitting on his own bed, using the strap of his watch to tease Miaomiao.
Even when Gong Yingxian played with the cat, he maintained a completely expressionless face, as if he weren’t teasing a cat but conducting an experiment. Yet in Ren Yi’s eyes, the scene was still incredibly warm and cozy.
“I’m done showering.”
Gong Yingxian looked up and glanced at him. “You took so long.”
“I was worried about touching the wound, so it took some effort,” Ren Yi said. “Don’t use something that expensive to tease her. You’ll spoil her. After that, will she even look at those nine-yuan-nine, free-shipping cat toys?”
Gong Yingxian nodded toward Ren Yi’s desk. “When I came out, she knocked my watch onto the floor and chased after it.”
Ren Yi’s eyes widened. “Hey, what a spendthrift little thing! Did you break the watch?”
“It won’t break.” Gong Yingxian continued teasing the cat by moving the watch strap up and down. “Even if it did, I wouldn’t make you pay for it.”
“That makes me feel much better.”
“Because she’s my cat too.” Gong Yingxian looked at Ren Yi. “Right?”
Ren Yi smiled. “Right.”
Gong Yingxian tapped Miaomiao lightly on the head with his finger. “When will you be able to play with Sachiel?”
“Who’s Sachiel?”
“My blue-blooded snake. Remember? That very beautiful blue snake.”
Ren Yi thought back. He had indeed seen a very unusual snake with an entirely water-blue body at Gong Yingxian’s reptile house, but it had quickly hidden itself in a tree.
“Oh, the one that went whoosh and disappeared?”
“Whether the snake comes out depends on its mood,” Gong Yingxian explained. “It was the first snake I ever raised. It’s already nine years old. Sachiel is the name of the angel of water.”
“You’re kidding.” Ren Yi pointed at Miaomiao. “You’re not serious, are you?”
Gong Yingxian explained, “First, the blue-blooded snake is a blue mutation of the green tree python. It isn’t venomous. Second, a cat’s nervous reaction speed is faster than a snake’s, so the snake can’t bully her. Of course, we’ll have to wait until she’s a little bigger.”
“No. No, no, no.” Ren Yi walked over and grabbed Miaomiao’s entire head with one hand. “Miaomiao, don’t listen to this guy’s nonsense. I’m not letting you go play with a snake.”
Gong Yingxian pressed his lips together in a smile. “Maybe she likes playing with snakes.”
“We’ll talk about it when she grows up.” Ren Yi moved Miaomiao aside. “Are you going back to the precinct?”
Gong Yingxian checked the time and nodded.
“If you’re going back to interrogate Zhou Chuan, I’ll go with you,” Ren Yi said. “You told me the case has made a lot of progress. I don’t want to miss it.”
“You were just injured. You should rest.”
“This little thing?” Ren Yi pointed at his neck disdainfully. “What kind of injury is this?”
Gong Yingxian stood up. “All right, then.”
“Let’s go.” Ren Yi put on his jacket.
Gong Yingxian walked a few steps before frowning uncomfortably. “Yours is a little tight on me.”
Ren Yi shot him a sideways look, displeased. “What do you mean?”
“Are you lacking in language ability, or do you have a problem with comprehension?”
“We’re only a few centimeters apart in height. How much difference could there be?” Ren Yi said indignantly.
However, he remembered what had just happened in the bathroom. Based on his experience, Gong Yingxian’s really did seem to be rather…
Gong Yingxian looked at him contemptuously. “Is the human body proportionally scaled?”
“You…” Ren Yi was so irritated that he nearly exploded. “If you’re so capable, then don’t wear it.”
“It was you who got my—”
“Stop, stop, stop, stop! Don’t say it!” They were passing through the entrance hall, where they could run into the squad’s firefighters at any moment. How were they supposed to explain this if someone overheard them? Ren Yi hurriedly begged him to stop.
Gong Yingxian shrugged and revealed a teasing smile.