“Yangyang, aren’t you going to work?” His mother’s voice rang out from outside the bedroom door, loud enough to make sure he heard her, startling Xu Yang awake from his dream.
“Yangyang? Are you awake yet? It’s almost 2:30. If you don’t leave now, you’ll miss the subway! …Yangyang?“ Seeing no response, Xu’s mother pushed open the door, puzzled, intending to come in and wake her sleepy son. It was sweltering hot in the autumn heatwave; don’t oversleep and forget to go to work. ”Didn’t you say yesterday that you had a lot of work to finish today because of some TV show?”
Hearing his mother’s nagging voice, Xu Yang couldn’t tell if he was still dreaming or awake. He opened his eyes dazedly, but something was blocking his vision—like a piece of clothing. The midday sun shone through the fabric, casting a bright, white glow over his eyes.
“Get up quickly, you’re going to be late. Your boss will scold you later.” Xu’s mother pushed open the door and saw Xu Yang covered with a thin blanket, with a white shirt draped over his head. “Why haven’t you washed this shirt? It’s been on the bed for days!” She pulled the shirt off his head, only to find her son staring at her in surprise, his forehead covered in sweat.
“Why didn’t you say anything when you woke up? That was pretty scary… Go take a shower. Look at you, sweating all over from taking a nap. You’re like a little kid…” She reached out to pull the thin blanket off him, but Xu Yang screamed and stopped her.
“Mom! Mom, go out. I can get up myself… I’m not a child anymore…” As he watched the blanket on his stomach about to be pulled away by his mother, Xu Yang quickly grabbed it, pulling his blanket to push his mother out of the room. Only when the bedroom door was closed again did he breathe a sigh of relief.
Glancing at the white shirt that had been pulled to the foot of the bed, Xu Yang felt a headache and eye pain. He touched his eyelids, which seemed swollen. Trembling, he reached his hand under the blanket covering his stomach, carefully touching the object inside his underwear, only to suddenly feel a slippery mess, startling him so much that his fingers jerked back as if he’d been electrocuted.
Oh my god!
When Xu Yang realized that the absurd and humiliating sexual encounter he had just experienced was a dream, he secretly sighed in relief, glad that he hadn’t had sex with a stranger. But when he felt the semen he had ejaculated in his dream, he was once again entangled in a complex mix of emotions, like someone who had fallen into a river and was being wrapped up by water plants, each circle tighter than the last, until he drowned in the river.
In the days leading up to this, he had been unable to sleep, but after experiencing that absurd dream at noon, Xu Yang was exhausted yet dared not sleep. He clicked to save the file, closed the software, then reopened it to double-check that the file had been saved successfully and the content was error-free. Afterward, Xu Yang removed his noise-canceling headphones, and the sound of air flowing suddenly rushed in, buzzing in his ears.
Whether it was from wearing headphones all afternoon and evening while working, or from the restlessness of the past few days, Xu Yang felt that the sounds in his ears were odd, like echoes, or as if there were a little person inside, repeating every sound that entered his ears like a tape recorder, creating a noisy, uncomfortable sensation.
He tugged at his ears and heard footsteps approaching the music room. Xu Yang turned around just in time to see Wen Hao walking in with a hard drive in his hand. He asked, “Is your ear bothering you?”
“Maybe I wore headphones for too long today and developed tinnitus.” In the morning at school, he had been listening to his work during break time, and after arriving at the studio in the afternoon, he had locked himself in for several hours. His ears were overused. But Xu Yang didn’t think much of it. Seeing Wen Hao come in with the hard drive, he asked, “Are you taking the work over?” Then he hurriedly pulled up the file he had just saved and copied it to the hard drive.
“You really have patience. You’ve been holed up here since you came to the studio. I haven’t seen you leave except to use the restroom.” The file was quite large, so Wenhao pulled up a chair and sat next to Xu Yang. Seeing Xu Yang twisting his neck to relax his cervical spine, Wenhao offered to give him a massage.
“Ah!” His neck was gripped by the cool hand, the pressure just right, hitting the acupoints. A tingling, numbing sensation surged up from the acupoints on his neck and shoulders, causing a throbbing pain in his head. Xu Yang couldn’t help but shiver. “You know how to massage?”
Wenhao smiled and stood up from the chair with renewed enthusiasm. He stood behind Xu Yang and used his elbow to apply moderate pressure to the trapezius muscle on Xu Yang’s shoulder, massaging it gently. “My father is a military doctor, so I learned some techniques from him to relieve muscle soreness. How about it? Does it feel good?”
“It hurts…” The area where Wen Hao’s elbow was pressing felt particularly tense. In recent days, Xu Yang had been sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time, and after each editing session, he always felt like that area was about to stiffen up. Now, with Wen Hao massaging it, it hurt, but it also felt incredibly comfortable. “This area is always particularly tense. I wonder if it’s shoulder tendonitis.”
“There are muscles here. If you don’t relax and stretch them, they’ll get damaged over time…”
“Ugh…” The pressure from the elbow was much stronger than the fingers, and Xu Yang couldn’t help but gasp. He almost let out a soft moan, but he bit his lip to hold it back. It’s not good to make noises in front of others.
Wen Hao noticed all these expressions and even teased him, saying that this was “pain and pleasure at the same time.” He took out his phone, pressed down on Xu Yang’s shoulder to increase the pressure, and took a photo of him grimacing with his head tilted back, biting his lip, and furrowing his brows.
The pent-up emotions of the past few days were eased by Wen Hao’s “massage.” It was rare to see Xu Yang smile, and Wen Hao stared at him, mesmerized by his giggling expression. Snapping back to reality, he quickly took out his phone and snapped several more photos, saying, “You look so handsome when you smile.”
“…What are you talking about?” Such a compliment made Xu Yang feel a bit embarrassed. At that moment, he realized that he and Wen Hao seemed too close now, and he immediately felt uncomfortable, subtly trying to create some distance. It was at that moment that Bi Yuan walked in.
“Yangyang, I…” Bi Yuan wanted to ask him if he had seen the message he sent him, and why he hadn’t replied. He turned the corner and walked into the music group’s workroom, only to see the mushroom-haired boy from the editing group standing next to Xu Yang. The two were standing very close together, chatting and laughing.
“Looking for me?” Seeing Bi Yuan arrive, Xu Yang hurriedly pushed away Wen Hao’s hand resting on his shoulder. He heard Wen Hao tell Bi Yuan, “I’ll go get the materials for editing first,” then walked out, stopping beside Bi Yuan. But Bi Yuan seemed to be staring intently at Wen Hao’s departing figure.
There was still work to be done that evening, and Bi Yuan had come to invite Xu Yang to dinner. However, he was surprised to see Xu Yang and Wen Hao acting so close, with smiles on their faces. Thinking back to the message he had sent Xu Yang earlier that morning without receiving a reply, Bi Yuan watched Wen Hao skip away, lost in thought.
Pulling his gaze away, Bi Yuan said to Xu Yang, “I wanted to ask if you wanted to have dinner together tonight. I sent you a message this morning, but you didn’t reply.” Seeing that Xu Yang was also watching Wen Hao’s departing direction, he asked, “Are you very familiar with Wen Hao?”
“Not really,” Xu Yang replied, though he didn’t understand why Bi Yuan was asking. He hurried to explain, “He was the one who approached me. Our work overlaps in some areas, so we ended up talking more.”
“I saw you two laughing and joking earlier, so I just asked.” Bi Yuan pretended not to care, finished asking, and then dragged Xu Yang to dinner. At the table, he said to Xu Yang, “This show only used one piece of music throughout. Next week at the press conference, Li Mu and I plan to invite you to attend as a music screenwriter.” After saying this, Bi Yuan kept staring into Xu Yang’s eyes, seeing his surprised expression, but there was no joy in it.
That evening, Bi Yuan drove Xu Yang home. Xu Yang remained silent throughout the ride, and Bi Yuan followed suit—he could sense that Xu Yang had something on his mind, but Xu Yang wasn’t willing to share it, which frustrated Bi Yuan.
This wasn’t the first time he had driven his Mercedes-Benz to this neighborhood. The gatekeeper almost always opened the gate as soon as he saw him, but when he dropped Xu Yang off at the building, Bi Yuan didn’t unlock the central locking system. Looking at Xu Yang’s gaze, Bi Yuan wanted to pinch his chin and give him a kiss, but he didn’t make any move.
“Mr. Bi…” Perhaps the silence in the car made Xu Yang feel uncomfortable. After hesitating for a long time, he finally asked, “About Manager Zhou’s matter…”
In fact, he had been wanting to ask Bi Yuan this question for days, but he didn’t know how to bring it up. He had even typed out a message on WeChat several times, but hesitated for a moment and deleted it. Ever since Bi Yuan had come to invite him to dinner, Xu Yang had been hesitating whether to speak up, but couldn’t find a suitable reason. “Have the people who exposed her photos been caught?”
“We know who did it, but they haven’t been caught.” Although he didn’t understand why Xu Yang suddenly asked this, Bi Yuan still told him, “They’re competitors engaging in malicious competition, using Yueyue as a scapegoat. We’ll handle it ourselves.” Seeing Xu Yang’s puzzled expression, Bi Yuan explained, “If we hand it over to the police or file a lawsuit, the initial commotion will be huge, and when the case is closed, it will be exposed again, which isn’t good for Yueyue.”
Xu Yang nodded in understanding, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bi Yuan still staring at him intently. Xu Yang felt a bit nervous; it seemed like he could read the kind of… that kind of… He dared not use the word “desire,” but his face flushed anyway.
“I want to kiss you…” The voice sounded like someone emerging from the desert, dry and rough like sand, echoing in Xu Yang’s ears. The internal voice repeated it softly, spreading in circles within his ears.
Xu Yang didn’t refuse. Bi Yuan’s lips were too soft, and the hands gripping his neck were too gentle. He had no reason to refuse. Feeling Xu Yang tremblingly extend his tongue in response, Bi Yuan kissed him more carefully, their lips and teeth intertwined, murmuring indistinctly yet irresistibly, “Come to my place.” But Xu Yang ultimately refused.
Watching his back disappear around the corner as he climbed the stairs, Bi Yuan recalled how close he had been with Wen Hao just moments ago. He took out his phone, opened WeChat, searched for “Mushroom Head Little Brother,” and quickly typed out a message. He paused for a moment, as if reviewing the content, then pressed send.
At the same time, Xu Yang, who was standing at his own door about to take out his keys to open the door, felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Seeing that it was a WeChat message from Wen Hao, he opened it. It was several photos taken by Wen Hao while giving him a massage, including one of him biting his lip to endure the pain. Below the photos was a text message.
“The photos I took of you today—look at the one where you’re biting your lip. If someone didn’t know better, they’d think you were caught in the act of climaxing. You look pretty much like an AV male lead.” The message was accompanied by three laughing emojis.
His heart felt like it had been struck by an iron fist, and he felt as though he couldn’t function anymore. A suffocating panic spread throughout his body. Xu Yang’s keys slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground, blending with the sound of the car starting and driving out of the neighborhood.
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