That night, lying in bed after exchanging goodnight messages with Lu Chen, He Xiaoyuan rolled the silver leopard brooch in his hand and couldn’t help thinking about what it felt like to kiss someone.
Like this?
He Xiaoyuan pressed a quick kiss onto the brooch.
Afterward, he felt a little stupid.
He rolled over, burrowed into the covers, and fell asleep.
The next day was Sunday. The two of them went out shopping, just as Xu Ruomeng had recommended.
This wasn’t something either of them did often—especially Lu Chen. Aside from the recent Spring Festival holiday, he hadn’t really wandered around outside for years. He Xiaoyuan was slightly better; at least he’d accompany Xu Ruomeng to malls. But ever since joining Sip, he’d been busy and rarely went out.
They started early, first walking along a well-known open-air street. They ate snacks the whole way, effectively finishing breakfast as they went.
“So good,” He Xiaoyuan said.
The food was hot. He blew on it as he ate, white steam puffing around his mouth.
Lu Chen ate neatly and asked, “Full?”
“Up ahead there’s supposed to be some kind of bun,” He Xiaoyuan said. “I heard it’s really good.”
They walked forward together while eating. When Lu Chen finished, he tossed the food bag into a trash can, came back, and slipped an arm around He Xiaoyuan’s arm. After a bit, He Xiaoyuan stopped, looking at a storefront sign. “I think it’s this one.”
They went into a nearby mall to browse. He Xiaoyuan remembered Xu Ruomeng complaining before that the handle of one of her bags got dirty after being carried a few times, and that she should buy a silk scarf to tie around it.
He Xiaoyuan remembered the luxury brand Xu Ruomeng liked. They happened to see it on the first floor, so he went in with Lu Chen.
Inside, He Xiaoyuan followed a sales associate to pick out a scarf. Lu Chen wandered around, looking at things casually.
Because his clothes and bearing clearly marked him as someone extraordinary, another associate immediately came over to give him one-on-one service.
Lu Chen looked around—bags, shoes, accessories—all pretty ordinary in his eyes.
When he reached the men’s section, he saw a set of sportswear that actually looked quite nice.
When He Xiaoyuan finished buying the scarf and found Lu Chen again, the associate was holding up a piece of clothing and explaining it to him in detail.
“Ge.”
He Xiaoyuan walked over.
Lu Chen turned around. “Try this on.”
?
Clothes?
He Xiaoyuan took them into the fitting room and quickly changed.
The price tag was still showing. Out of habit, he picked it up and glanced at it—first the top, then the pants—and silently clicked his tongue. So expensive.
He wore it out for Lu Chen to see, and Lu Chen’s eyes immediately lit up. The main color was white. Compared to the suits He Xiaoyuan wore to work, the style was completely different, and the color much brighter.
He Xiaoyuan was already fair. Wearing white made him look even fresher and cleaner.
The sportswear was tailored to fit without looking tight, perfectly showing off his proportions and long legs.
In short, it looked fantastic.
Lu Chen smiled openly, extremely satisfied, while the sales associate praised him nonstop from the side.
He Xiaoyuan looked at himself in the mirror, then turned to Lu Chen and spread his arms slightly in a questioning gesture. “Well?”
Lu Chen answered without hesitation. “Pay for it.”
He Xiaoyuan’s eyes widened. Buy it?
Lu Chen clearly saw his reaction but pretended not to. Of course he was buying it.
The sales associate then asked He Xiaoyuan to go back into the fitting room to change out of the clothes. He Xiaoyuan smiled at the associate and said, “Just a moment,” then took a few quick steps toward Lu Chen. Looping his arm through Lu Chen’s, he pivoted him around so they were facing away from the associate, walked a few steps farther, and lowered his voice. “It’s too expensive.”
The top was over ten thousand, nearly twenty thousand. The pants were also over ten thousand. One set was close to thirty thousand.
Thirty thousand!
Lu Chen actually enjoyed being pulled along like this by his young boyfriend. He lowered his voice as well, calm and steady. “I’m buying it for you.”
“You don’t need to worry about the money, okay?”
He Xiaoyuan immediately fell silent, remembering how Lu Chen had once said that he had a lot of money, high spending habits, and wouldn’t buy cheap things.
He Xiaoyuan only asked, “Do you usually buy things like this?”
“I don’t really shop,” Lu Chen replied. “If I need something, I usually have Chen Jun arrange it.”
As he spoke, he lowered his gaze to look at what He Xiaoyuan was wearing, reached out to adjust the front collar for him, and said with unusual patience, “It’s rare that I actually want to buy something.”
Lu Chen added, “Go on, change out of it. I’ll go pay.”
He Xiaoyuan stayed close to him, didn’t say anything, and didn’t move—his meaning was obvious: it was expensive, and he didn’t really want it.
Lu Chen immediately turned his head, about to signal the sales associate. “Then add another—”
He Xiaoyuan instantly let go of his arm and turned back toward the fitting room.
Lu Chen laughed softly. He knew this would work.
Just then, the sales associate came over. “Sir, is there anything else you need?”
Lu Chen thought for a moment. “Pick out a women’s bag.”
So when He Xiaoyuan finished changing and wandered around the store a bit before returning to Lu Chen, he saw two boxes placed on the glass checkout counter. One box, containing the clothes, was already packed. Lu Chen’s sales associate was packing a women’s bag into the other box.
He Xiaoyuan: ?
Lu Chen explained, “Next time we have dinner with your friend, we’ll give it to her as a meeting gift.”
He Xiaoyuan was surprised. “You bought it for Xiaomeng?”
“Yes,” Lu Chen said. “Better to buy it now. Otherwise I might forget later and be unprepared.”
He Xiaoyuan thought Lu Chen was incredibly thoughtful.
Then it occurred to him—this bag probably wasn’t cheap either.
He Xiaoyuan directly asked the sales associate, who replied that it wasn’t very expensive, just over twenty thousand, but it wasn’t commonly available in the store and was hard to get.
He Xiaoyuan didn’t say much in front of the associate. He glanced at Lu Chen and thought to himself that some boyfriends really knew how to spend money—five or six hundred thousand had gone out the door in just this short time.
And that wasn’t all. When they were leaving, the sales associate lifted the two boxes to hand them over, but Lu Chen said not to take them. Someone would come pick them up later. So he left the store empty-handed, taking He Xiaoyuan with him.
He Xiaoyuan guessed it would be Chen Jun. He honestly couldn’t imagine shopping without carrying anything yourself, having someone else come take it and send it home. He looked at the man beside him with open admiration.
Lu Chen put an arm around his shoulders and explained, “It’s a hassle to carry things around while shopping.”
He Xiaoyuan said faintly, “Being in a relationship is actually kind of a hassle too.”
Lu Chen laughed. “How is that a hassle?”
As they passed another luxury brand store, Lu Chen patted He Xiaoyuan. “Let’s go in and buy you another outfit.”
“I already have clothes,” He Xiaoyuan protested as he was pulled toward the store.
“It’s different,” Lu Chen said. “When you wear clothes I bought for you, I feel a sense of accomplishment.”
That day, He Xiaoyuan tried on at least a dozen outfits. Lu Chen successfully completed his “buy, buy, buy” achievement, and by He Xiaoyuan’s conservative estimate, Lu Chen had spent at least two hundred thousand.
In the end, He Xiaoyuan grabbed Lu Chen’s arm and dragged him out of the store. “No more buying!”
Lu Chen grabbed him back, trying to pull him into the store, laughing as he said, “We’re not done yet.”
The two of them tugged at each other like a game of tug-of-war. He Xiaoyuan pulled in the opposite direction, and he also knew exactly how to “deal with” Lu Chen. “I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”
Lu Chen didn’t fall for it. He held onto him and said, “I’ll have the store’s staff go buy something for you.”
He Xiaoyuan hadn’t expected luxury stores to even offer services like that. He pulled harder, dragging Lu Chen outward. “I don’t like food other people buy. I want to go look and choose it myself.”
Lu Chen laughed. They struggled comically for a while at the store entrance. In the end, He Xiaoyuan won. They stopped shopping on the first floor and went upstairs to buy food.
While eating ice cream cones and sitting on a mall bench, He Xiaoyuan said to Lu Chen, “Do you always spend money like this? Treating two hundred thousand like it’s two thousand?”
Lu Chen was holding an ice cream cone too, but not for himself—he was holding it for He Xiaoyuan.
He said casually, “Two thousand is still two thousand. I do have a sense of money.”
He Xiaoyuan replied, “Then your sense and my sense definitely aren’t the same.”
Lu Chen hummed in acknowledgment and turned his head toward him, showing he was listening.
He Xiaoyuan licked his ice cream. “In your world, two hundred thousand can be spent casually. For me, two hundred thousand has to be saved to buy a house.”
Lu Chen reminded him, “But you gave me your salary card.”
He Xiaoyuan shrugged. “You don’t even use it.”
The money was still just sitting there anyway.
He continued, speaking sincerely, “Really, don’t buy things for me next time. You spend two hundred thousand on me, but I can’t spend two hundred thousand on you.”
Lu Chen said, “You don’t need to think about it that much.”
He Xiaoyuan turned his head while eating his ice cream, his gaze clear as he looked at Lu Chen. “But it makes me feel burdened.”
“I’ll feel like what I can give you is far less than what you give me.”
Then he muttered, “And no one ever said that being together means you have to keep spending money, right?”
Lu Chen said gently, almost coaxing him, “You don’t need to give me anything. I’ll spend it on you.”
He Xiaoyuan shook his head while eating his ice cream. “Mm—no.”
Lu Chen asked, “You don’t want it?”
He Xiaoyuan answered honestly, “I don’t.”
Lu Chen added, “I have plenty of money. Don’t worry. And I’m willing.”
He Xiaoyuan shook his head again. Still no. Then he said, “I should’ve written this into 12345 too.”
It didn’t seem too late to add it now: “0. No extravagant spending.”
Lu Chen said, “It’s not extravagant.”
He Xiaoyuan crossed his arms in an exaggerated X. “How is it not extravagant? You even bought Xiaomeng a bag. I’ve been friends with her for so many years, and the only times I ever bought her bags were when Meow Meow paid out a bonus, and during Spring Festival—and even then it was just two.”
His tone was serious and sincere as he tried to negotiate. “Really, don’t spend that much on me. I don’t need you to spend money on me either.”
As he spoke, he nudged Lu Chen lightly with his elbow.
Lu Chen took a step back. “Fine. From now on, I won’t deliberately buy you expensive things. But when I give you something, you have to accept it.”
He Xiaoyuan hummed in agreement, then suddenly laughed as if something had occurred to him.
Lu Chen looked at him. He Xiaoyuan laughed as he explained, “I just think it’s kind of stupid that the two of us are making these ‘rules’ like this.”
Like negotiating the terms of a business partnership.
Lu Chen raised a hand and pinched the back of He Xiaoyuan’s neck lightly. So you finally noticed.
He Xiaoyuan laughed and shrank his neck. “Your hand is so cold.”
He had just been holding an ice cream cone.
Lu Chen said, “Hurry up and eat. Mine’s about to melt.”
He Xiaoyuan said, “After we finish, let’s go outside. There’s a lake over there—you can feed pigeons by the water.”
So afterward, He Xiaoyuan not only fed pigeons, he also sat on a wooden bench by the lake blowing bubbles.
When Lu Chen came back from the restroom, from seven or eight meters away, he saw He Xiaoyuan leaning back against the bench, blowing bubbles. Sunlight lit them up in iridescent colors, and the young man’s face seemed softly glazed with warmth. White pigeons rose and fell all around him. The whole scene was as romantic as an oil painting.
Lu Chen stopped, took out his phone, and captured the moment.
That evening, their date once again ended with Lu Chen kissing He Xiaoyuan on the cheek.
After kissing him, Lu Chen even asked, “Do you feel any difference between today and yesterday?”
?
A difference?
He Xiaoyuan froze for a moment. Was he supposed to write a post-kiss reflection now?
If he said it was the same, would that be the wrong answer?
He thought for a bit. “Today… felt heavier than yesterday?”
Apparently, he hadn’t noticed.
Lu Chen only smiled without saying anything.
After that, the new workweek began, and everything was much the same as before.
During the day they worked. At night, no matter how late it was, either Lu Chen came to He Xiaoyuan’s place, or He Xiaoyuan went to Yanlan Bay.
Before parting each night, Lu Chen would, as usual, kiss He Xiaoyuan on the cheek.
Without Lu Chen asking—and he didn’t ask—He Xiaoyuan would think on his own: was it any different from yesterday, the day before, or the day before that? It didn’t seem like it.
Until another Friday, when Lu Chen placed a kiss at the corner of He Xiaoyuan’s mouth.
He Xiaoyuan: !!!
He froze in place, standing stiffly, then slowly shifted his gaze forward.
In front of him stood a sly, scheming big bad wolf with a bushy tail. It turned out the wolf had planned this all along—one kiss a day, each one inching a little closer to the lips, day by day, just a little, a little more, until he finally succeeded in kissing the corner of his mouth.
He Xiaoyuan suddenly understood everything. He looked at Lu Chen with a quiet, so that’s how it is expression.
Lu Chen smiled knowingly and asked, feigning innocence, “What?”
Calmly, He Xiaoyuan said, “Brother, come here.”
Lu Chen stepped closer.
Not close enough.
He Xiaoyuan tilted his chin slightly. Again.
Lu Chen moved closer.
Come on.
Lu Chen leaned in until he was right in front of him.
Suddenly, He Xiaoyuan lifted his chin and quickly pecked Lu Chen on the lips—then turned and ran.