Luo Xiao truly wanted to kiss Wen Ran. Less than 24 hours had passed since their previous kiss, and he hadn’t forgotten the softness and sweetness of Wen Ran’s lips.
He respected Wen Ran’s boundaries—if the boy said no, he would immediately withdraw.
“Sure,” Wen Ran agreed.
Without hesitation, Luo Xiao slid his arm under Wen Ran’s legs, lifting him effortlessly. Wen Ran instinctively wrapped his arms around Luo Xiao’s neck. Feeling Luo Xiao lift him with just one arm, Wen Ran thought: So manly!
“Not heavy?” he asked.
“Just your weight,” Luo Xiao replied, lowering him onto the chair, positioning Wen Ran across his lap.
“Go ahead,” he said, hand relaxed at his side, like the previous evening on Wen Ran’s sofa.
“Really?” Wen Ran asked, already slipping his hand beneath Luo Xiao’s shirt, fingers pressing against the defined muscles. Soft, firm, exactly as they looked.
“You’re amazing,” Wen Ran praised, leaning forward to kiss Luo Xiao’s lips. Luo Xiao immediately met him halfway, closing his eyes, savoring the soft, fragrant warmth.
As the slightly passive partner, Wen Ran expected Luo Xiao to continue, but he pulled back after a few kisses, brushing his nose across Wen Ran’s cheek: “You smell so good.”
“You’re not kissing anymore?” Wen Ran asked, puzzled.
“No. Not anymore,” Luo Xiao replied, leaning back, eyes and expression full of longing.
Wen Ran sensed it clearly.
“You want to?” he asked playfully.
“No,” Luo Xiao denied, despite the desire.
Wen Ran rested half on him, eyes sparkling, teasing: “Not touching because you don’t want to, or are you pretending?”
“Pretending what?”
“To be good, proper.”
Luo Xiao laughed, looking at him. “Do you really think anyone can be proper at this moment?”
Wen Ran’s charm was irresistible. His hands wandered along Luo Xiao’s abs, fingertips teasing sensitive areas.
“Lunchtime,” he suddenly said, stepping back.
But Luo Xiao was quicker—grabbing one of Wen Ran’s wrists and giving a playful pat on his rear: “Who’s naughty?”
Wen Ran laughed uncontrollably, running off.
Sitting together at the corner of the long table, Luo Xiao cooked and served while Wen Ran drew with his left hand, right hand holding chopsticks.
Luo Xiao noticed, quiet, content—observing him drawing even during meals, living entirely by his whims, unconcerned with norms or schedules.
This trait actually reminded Luo Xiao a bit of himself.
When he was out hiking, climbing, or cycling, he never cared about meal times or whether he was hungry. If he was in the mood, he’d just keep going. Eating or not—he didn’t think about it.
Even though he’d only known Wen Ran for a few days, with limited contact and understanding, Luo Xiao sensed something familiar in him: in some ways, Wen Ran and he were alike. He smiled quietly to himself at that thought.
Watching Wen Ran multitask—holding a pen and sketching while picking up food with his left hand—Luo Xiao casually asked, “Have you only been drawing me these past few days?”
“Yeah,” Wen Ran replied, chewing a meatball casually. “I don’t draw much these days. Mostly I have no inspiration and feel lazy.”
“When I’m in the mood, I just draw a bit,” he added.
“You said you’d sell your paintings to galleries,” Luo Xiao noted.
“Yeah, I do sell them,” Wen Ran replied without lifting his eyes from the canvas. “About two a year, not many.”
“What do you paint?”
“Whatever. But I’m better with oils,” Wen Ran explained. “My eyes aren’t like yours. I can tell apart lots of different greens, reds, blues. Even a one percent difference—I can see it.”
“So when I paint the same thing as others, the colors often end up noticeably different,” he continued.
“Absolute color sense?” Luo Xiao asked, understanding.
Wen Ran shook his head, continuing to paint. “Not exactly. I have to exaggerate a bit. Reds that look the same to you are different to me. Once they’re on the canvas and dry, the difference shows even more.”
“So your view of the world is different from others’?” Luo Xiao asked.
“Yeah,” Wen Ran said, giving an example: “Have you seen ginkgo trees in late autumn? Yellow and beautiful?”
“Of course.”
“You see yellow as just yellow, right? One tree, all the leaves together, looks like a single yellow. Not for me. To me, each leaf has its own shade—messy but beautiful.”
Luo Xiao was amazed. “And people?”
“Same. Each face has subtle differences in skin tone, hair color varies. Only industrial things—like printed packaging—look the same to me.”
“And me?”
Wen Ran finally looked at Luo Xiao, eyes meeting his, then smiled at his face before returning to painting. “Your skin tone is quite uniform. Probably from sun exposure, evenly tanned.”
He laughed, recalling how this had caused confusion in his childhood. His mom and kindergarten teacher had tried to teach him to differentiate colors. He had assumed only his green was real, so he didn’t know which pencil to use. People even thought he was colorblind and took him to tests. Other kids mocked him.
Luo Xiao listened, fascinated. He had seen all sorts of people in the world, but Wen Ran’s perception was entirely new.
“I want to see the world through your eyes,” he admitted.
“Sure,” Wen Ran said, turning to him. “I’ll paint you an oil painting. Using my usual mixing, the greens you see might still look normal. I can exaggerate the differences so you’ll see how my vision differs from yours.”
Luo Xiao instinctively looked into Wen Ran’s eyes, curious about the rich, uniquely colored world reflected there.
“Even white, like snow, looks different?” he asked.
Wen Ran nodded, still painting between bites. “Yes. Even transparent water looks different—some clear, some murky. And the clear varies, the murky varies.”
That night, Luo Xiao returned to the dorm past eleven. The others teased him for coming back so late.
Only Ding Yijie stayed quiet, lying on his bed, glancing at Luo Xiao as he headed to the bathroom.
Ding Yijie scoffed in his heart: So what? We’re testing four items anyway. Who knows what the guy does privately?
Still frustrated at not adding Wen Ran on WeChat, Ding Yijie sent another friend a message: “Use your phone, send a message to this number. Say: Your shop has an employee named Luo Xiao who doesn’t work properly, spends his time flirting while maintaining cars…”