The question was completely unexpected to Luo Zhiyu.
He had thought he would be the one to test the waters first. He had prepared himself to be laughed at and mocked, but he had never imagined that he had been the one under someone else’s scrutiny all along.
That half-dreamlike moment of tenderness, when time seemed to go awry in the art room’s nighttime shadows, hadn’t been his imagination after all.
For a moment, he was both astonished and delighted. The questions that had been floating around in his mind seemed to have found their answers, and even the way they had been interacting lately finally made sense.
Xiao Yan liked him.
That was why Xiao Yan had repeatedly emphasized certain things to him, gradually drawing a clear line in his heart between Xiao Yan and “other alphas.”
He was the one who had been half a beat too slow, the one who had taken too long to recognize his own feelings.
However, returning to the question itself—
Choosing “Good” meant accepting him.
Choosing “Not good” meant breaking the rules, which meant Xiao Yan could do whatever he wanted with him—which still meant accepting him.
Accepting him meant ignoring the diagnosis of their pheromone compatibility and choosing to like him.
“You’re pretty clever, aren’t you?” Luo Zhiyu ran through the two possible answers in his head and immediately realized that Xiao Yan had taken advantage of the rules he’d made up on the spur of the moment. “You set me up! You changed my rules while I wasn’t paying attention.”
From the very beginning, Xiao Yan had never intended to give him a choice.
Luo Zhiyu wasn’t someone else. Clearly, he already knew the answer to that question.
“Nonsense. I didn’t change your rules.” Xiao Yan rejected that accusation. “I merely emphasized your rules, clarified the parts that weren’t clear, and made our conversation more consistent with them.”
“How can liking you be called setting you up?”
Luo Zhiyu: “…”
He had genuinely never realized before that his Yan-ge was so good with words. This method of trapping someone felt extremely familiar. It was exactly the sort of trick Luo Zhiyu himself often used.
Was this what they meant by you become like the people you spend time with?
“Who does things like that?” Luo Zhiyu protested. “I never had a choice in the first place!”
“You lost your choice the moment my reputation was ruined,” Xiao Yan pointed out. “You pinned so many accusations on me that no one wants me anymore. You’ll just have to take me in.”
At this point, Luo Zhiyu wanted to clarify two things. First, he hadn’t pinned any accusations on Xiao Yan—he had absolutely no memory of doing so. Second, Xiao Yan was the pride and poster boy of No. 1 High School. There was no way no one would want him.
“No lying, no follow-up questions.” Xiao Yan repeated the rules Luo Zhiyu had just established, refining and expanding them. He was turning this brief conversation into something more like a contest between the two of them. “No changing the options, and no bringing up irrelevant matters.”
“I made the rules, so shouldn’t I be the one who gets to interpret them?” Luo Zhiyu attempted to protest.
“Objection overruled.” Xiao Yan seemed determined to stick to their improvised rules of conversation and refused to accept any challenges. “I get to interpret them, too.”
“You’re asking for a beating with a broom, aren’t you?” Luo Zhiyu said irritably. “So we’re never going to settle this, huh?”
“‘Good’ or ‘not good.’” Xiao Yan waited for his answer. “If you don’t answer soon, the dormitory area will close. If you keep stalling, I’ll count it as breaking the rules.”
“Personally, I’d prefer it if you broke the rules.”
Luo Zhiyu: “…”
“In your dreams.” Luo Zhiyu swatted Xiao Yan’s hand away. “My answer is ‘Good.’”
Fearless commitment and a disregard for consequences often went hand in hand with youthful ignorance. They appeared in someone’s memories or in society’s condemnation of them. But perhaps youthful ignorance had never been entirely a derogatory term. For many people, it was what they desperately wished they could have back after letting something slip away.
“If I agree to this now, it’s because I like you as a person,” Luo Zhiyu said. “I’m not asking about your pheromones, I’m not asking about your family background, and I don’t want to think about the future.”
Xiao Yan received the answer he had expected.
“I’ve caught you,” he said softly.
Luo Zhiyu was still contemplating the long struggle ahead of him against their pheromone compatibility results when he suddenly heard Xiao Yan’s conclusion.
“Caught me doing what?” He vaguely remembered that when he and Xiao Yan had once been exchanging threats, they’d said that whoever got caught could be bullied however the other pleased. He had almost forgotten about it himself. Surely Xiao Yan had forgotten, too?
Xiao Yan didn’t explain this sudden conclusion. Instead, he put it another way.
“From now on, you can come wait for me after class openly and legitimately.”
The phrase openly and legitimately suited Luo Zhiyu perfectly when applied to this situation.
The little hooligan declared, “I quit. Your class runs overtime every single day. Now that I’m officially your boyfriend, I don’t have to go over there every day just to establish my legitimacy, do I?”
“Then you can also legitimately keep acting like a hooligan toward me,” Xiao Yan said. “Right?”
“Who’s acting like a hooligan?” The little hooligan refused to admit to anything he had ever done. “Don’t slander me. Do you have any evidence?”
No evidence had been preserved, and Luo Zhiyu wasn’t about to lie down and let himself be ridiculed. Xiao Yan decided he would catch him in the act next time.
The streetlights gradually changed from orange to pale yellow. They had already left the little path, and Luo Zhiyu’s dormitory area was just ahead. Both of them slowed their steps.
They hadn’t been temporarily marked, yet neither wanted to part. Clearly, this had nothing to do with pheromones.
Luo Zhiyu picked up his schoolbag and was about to leave, but Xiao Yan grabbed him and pulled him back, refusing to let him go.
“It’s time to sleep, big brother.” Luo Zhiyu blinked at him. “Let me go back.”
“Give me some compensation.” Xiao Yan made his first demand after catching his star.
“What’s your reason?” Luo Zhiyu was amused. Not only had Xiao Yan stopped indulging him, he was now making demands of him, too. Luo Zhiyu had always been carefree and used to doing whatever he pleased, but he didn’t dislike this feeling of being kept in line and having someone make demands of him.
“I was the one who pursued you first. You’ve been freeloading off me for so long. Don’t you think you should give me some compensation?”
“How am I freeloading—”
Once again, Xiao Yan caught the front of Luo Zhiyu’s uniform and pulled him toward himself. This time, he didn’t steady him, and Luo Zhiyu bumped into his chest. The hand gripping his uniform moved upward, pushing against his chin and tilting his face up slightly.
Luo Zhiyu relaxed his tense body and closed his eyes, waiting for his very first kiss.
They were standing very close to the dormitories. Even though there were no surveillance cameras in this area, their behavior was still outrageously bold. Teachers leaving work could pass by at any moment, and students occasionally came through here, too. The chances of being caught were high.
Rebellion and crossing boundaries were exactly the sorts of things that excited many students at their age. And that was even more true when the person kissing him was someone he liked.
No one passed by that spot that evening, apart from the two of them. Even so, the situation had Luo Zhiyu practically buzzing with excitement.
It was only a light kiss. Xiao Yan didn’t touch the gland at the back of his neck, either. Yet Luo Zhiyu’s peach-scented pheromones were becoming difficult to control. The mischievous peach had taken his owner’s place and wrapped itself all around Xiao Yan.
Xiao Yan returned to the dormitory smelling of peaches.
Zhang Shu had gone upstairs to visit someone, Fan Yue was chasing after his girlfriend, and only Tang Yuan remained in the dormitory. More than a dozen cats were asleep beside the dormitory door.
“Did Luo Zhiyu spray you with soda again?” Tang Yuan was slumped over his desk, his eyes half-closed as he drifted in and out of sleep. “That peach scent is so nice.”
Xiao Yan’s hand paused as he picked up a book. He remembered that sweet, refreshing shower of soda on a summer afternoon the previous year.
———
“Where have you been fooling around? It’s been half an hour since classes ended.” Jing Ximing opened the door for Luo Zhiyu while carrying a washbasin full of laundry. “Since when do you and Xiao Yan have so much to talk about?”
Luo Zhiyu had discovered that even just hearing Xiao Yan’s name could put him in a good mood.
“I wasn’t fooling around.” It was all perfectly legitimate now.
“I have a question.” Luo Zhiyu dropped his schoolbag. “Why do we care so much about alpha-omega pheromone compatibility?”
“Huh?” Jing Ximing was hanging clothes out to dry on the balcony. “Why are you still hung up on that?”
“It’s not that we care about it, exactly,” Jing Ximing explained. “It’s just something you can’t ignore. If the compatibility is too poor, the relationship might not work as smoothly, either. And you can’t complete a permanent marking, so you miss out on that sense of ceremony. Even the numbers on your marriage certificate end up a digit short compared to everyone else’s.”
“Okay.”
Luo Zhiyu leaned against the side of his bed. He could still faintly feel the kiss on his lips. He reached up and touched the corner of his mouth, then rolled over to face the wall, smiling to himself.
“What if one of them meets someone with much higher pheromone compatibility? That could make things difficult, couldn’t it?” Jing Ximing mused.
“Then I’ll beat Orange until he turns into orange juice.”
Jing Ximing slowly drew a question mark on a sheet of scrap paper.
OrangeOrange: I’m lying down.
ZhiliaˇoZhiliǎo: Me too.
ZhiliaˇoZhiliǎo: I just checked the timetable. Tomorrow, third period, both our classes have PE!
OrangeOrange: …
OrangeOrange: Go to sleep early!
ZhiliaˇoZhiliǎo: I’ll sneak over and play badminton with you, hahaha.
OrangeOrange: fairy frowning.jpg Go to sleep.
Everything was just as it had always been. They were still the same two people as before; they simply had the official status to go with it now.
No. 1 High School placed considerable emphasis on students’ physical fitness. The art and music teachers were often “asked to take leave,” but students’ PE classes always went ahead as scheduled. This semester, Luo Zhiyu had once again chosen badminton, and before the bell had even rung, he was already darting onto the sports field with his racket.
“Was he always this enthusiastic about PE?” the homeroom teacher mused.
Luo Zhiyu was famous far and wide for being athletically gifted but too lazy to exercise. He was so reluctant to show any collective spirit that he wouldn’t even bother demonstrating it at the school sports meet. Recently, however, he had been unusually enthusiastic.
“Yan-ge!”
Luo Zhiyu raised his hand and smacked a shuttlecock straight toward Xiao Yan’s head. His movement was so practiced that Jing Ximing and the others couldn’t bear to watch.
Xiao Yan had already turned around at the sound of his voice and caught the shuttlecock flying toward him.
“You two go ahead and play. We’ll play over there.” Jing Ximing and his friends headed to the other side of the court. “We’re officially assuming those two are partners, and we’re officially assuming Luo Zhiyu is in Class 2-3.”
The basic theory for the PE electives had all been taught during the first half of the semester. In the second half, the students were allowed to exercise on their own, and the teachers didn’t supervise them too closely. The two teachers in charge of the badminton elective stood by the pull-up bars, each holding a teacup and chatting.
Luo Zhiyu was quite good at badminton, and Xiao Yan didn’t go easy on him. They traded shots back and forth, both smashing the shuttlecock with considerable force. Fan Yue, who was taking basketball, came over to retrieve a ball and got smacked right on the forehead by one of Xiao Yan’s shots. He let out an immediate yelp and hurried away.
“I’m tired.” Luo Zhiyu tossed his racket aside and sat with Xiao Yan on the steps beside the badminton court. “Give me your water bottle.”
He hadn’t had time to bring water to class, so he took the liberty of commandeering his boyfriend’s bottle—and thoughtfully left half the water for Xiao Yan.
Their red and blue school uniform jackets lay off to one side, draped over a tree branch beside the sports field. Half of Luo Zhiyu’s body was leaning against Xiao Yan’s shoulder. He reached out to tug on Xiao Yan’s shoelaces, only to have his hand slapped away.
“My boyfriend is hitting me.” Luo Zhiyu lazily freeloaded on the orange scent. Since Xiao Yan had been sweating during exercise, a faint orange fragrance surrounded him. Luo Zhiyu reached out to tug at the buttons on Xiao Yan’s shirt, only to have his hand slapped away again.
“Are you done being annoying?” Having failed to freeload on his boyfriend’s scent, the little hooligan suddenly sprang to his feet without warning and shoved Xiao Yan onto the grass. Xiao Yan immediately pinned him back down, pressing his arm against the ground and giving him a hard pinch at the back of his neck.
“I was wrong, I was wrong! I’ll stop messing around!” Luo Zhiyu raised his hands in surrender.
“Your class’s Luo Zhiyu and our class’s Xiao Yan seem to be awfully close,” the two PE teachers remarked when they saw the scene. “Luo Zhiyu is an omega, isn’t he? Is it okay for them to roughhouse like that?”
“Huh? Oh, those two fight all the time and occasionally make up.” Tang Yuan, who had come over to retrieve a ball, overheard the teachers’ conversation and immediately shook his head. “As for dating at school, that’s absolutely not happening. Those two are completely innocent.”