DLRAS Chapter 125 [Past]

Chapter 125: Have you ever liked anyone?

Huo Niansheng threw the towel over the back of the chair and opened the door. “What’s wrong?”

Chen Wengang stood outside like a ghost, his expression equally distant—he said his ears were ringing.

Huo Niansheng froze for a moment, genuinely leaning in to check his ear. “What happened?”

Chen Wengang suddenly reached out and hugged him.

Huo Niansheng didn’t move right away. Chen Wengang pressed his face against his chest.

Since the living room was empty and Chen Wengang had just taken a shower, the lemon scent of body wash lingered on his skin. Huo Niansheng could smell the damp, warm mist trapped in his hair. From this angle, with a slight tilt of his head, Huo Niansheng could see the scar on the side of his forehead.

Slowly, he raised his hand, patted Chen Wengang’s back, and lifted his face.

In a desperate gamble, Chen Wengang reached up to capture his lips.

He kissed him tentatively at first, fully prepared to be pushed away, but Huo Niansheng held him and responded.

And so, as if driven by some phantom force, the two ended up in bed. Chen Wengang was pressed into the pillows by Huo Niansheng, who kissed him with a subtle, almost imperceptible caution. Looping his arms around Huo Niansheng’s neck, a trace of guilt initially flashed through his mind, followed by a profound, hollow emptiness.

Right up until the door opened, he hadn’t figured out why he was looking for Huo Niansheng or what he even could do.

When the door opened, Huo Niansheng looked at him with those half-smiling peach blossom eyes, and his body impulsively made the decision for him.

When people don’t know what to do, they subconsciously follow their instincts. The need for the comfort of another is an instinct, not logic. And Huo Niansheng couldn’t quite articulate his own thoughts either; what he was doing right now was undoubtedly devoid of reason, and he knew it well.

Quiet, fragmented sounds filled his ears. He grasped a hand; the wrist was thin and frail, with blue veins hiding just beneath the skin.

But he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything else.

By the second half of the night, the noises in the room ceased. Chen Wengang lay prone at the head of the bed, resting his chin on his hands, watching the clock on the nightstand. The slender hands ticked forward second by second, drip-drop. After staring at it for a while, his eyes grew heavy with sleep, his spirit slightly listless.

Huo Niansheng tugged at the bedsheets and leaned over, trailing his fingers up his spine toward his shoulder blades. Under the angle of the wall lamp, a few newly healed scars on Chen Wengang’s back were visible. Before he even realized it, he shivered instinctively. But Huo Niansheng still traced them. “How did you get these?”

Chen Wengang turned his head to look back, spotting them. “From fighting with someone.”

A moment of silence lingered behind him. Huo Niansheng measured the marks on his skin with his thumb and index finger. As to when Chen Wengang ever had the chance to fight someone and end up with marks that looked suspiciously like cigarette burns, he didn’t ask further.

Instead, he chuckled. “What’s the matter? Saw your old flame today and feeling down?”

Chen Wengang reached out, swept the box on the nightstand back into the still-open drawer, and shoved it shut. He didn’t answer the question. Turning his head, he asked Huo Niansheng instead, “Do you have a girlfriend right now?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No. Not even casual hookups who don’t count as boyfriends or girlfriends. What are you worried about? Bitten by a snake once, afraid of a well rope for ten years?”

“…Yeah.”

“Then what were you doing just now? Why didn’t you think to ask then?” Huo Niansheng scoffed, pressing close to his ear. “My, my. You come looking for me when you’re in a bad mood, and only remember to ask all this after you’re done using me. What do you take me for?”

Chen Wengang was tongue-tied, completely lost for words. He shifted his posture, sitting up slightly, and turned onto his side. Huo Niansheng chased after him. Despite his teasing words, he extended an arm to pull at his shoulder, slipping it behind his head as if pulling him into an embrace.

Within his movements, there was such a natural intimacy that Chen Wengang didn’t dare move recklessly for a moment, quietly observing what would happen next. He wasn’t even entirely sure if this playboy acted with such grace with everyone he slept with.

It was strange to think about. The two of them originally had absolutely nothing to do with each other. Had he not experienced a series of crushing accidents, Chen Wengang probably would have never imagined that one day he’d be taken in by Huo Niansheng and live with him for so long. Furthermore, in the past, he had always harbored a stereotypical impression of Huo Niansheng as a frivolous man. Regardless, it was even more unimaginable that one day they would end up rolling around in bed together.

It just went to show how unpredictable the world was, how fate liked to play tricks. Now that it had happened, he didn’t feel anything particularly special.

After a while, Chen Wengang suddenly asked, “Have you ever liked anyone?”

Huo Niansheng said, “Even less so. What about you?”

Chen Wengang said, “I have, but now it’s only hatred.”

Huo Niansheng listened quietly to him pour his heart out. He said, “I should hate Zheng Yucheng. There seem to be many reasons I could hate him, but if I really try to tally them up, it’s impossible to count clearly. He’s a young master; he was quite good to me when we were kids, and the Zheng family did raise me. So I thought, fine, let’s just never see each other again until the day we die, let all the grievances rot in my stomach. A lifetime doesn’t really seem that long. I had originally stopped thinking about it, but truly seeing him today made me realize the rest of my life is still far too long. The better our relationship was in the past, the less I can accept it now. Since I can’t wrap my head around it, I don’t want to see him anymore. Just one more glance is agonizing.”

Huo Niansheng listened very seriously. “So what should we do? Find someone to take him out?”

Chen Wengang couldn’t help but retort, “Why don’t you just lend me a sum of money and let me fly far, far away?”

Hearing this, Huo Niansheng smiled. “Will you pay me back later? With everything you owe, could you ever clear the debt?”

Chen Wengang pulled at his lips in a slight smile. “Seeing as you probably don’t lack this little bit, how about I slowly pay you back after I start my new life?”

Of course, Huo Niansheng didn’t agree. He held Chen Wengang close. They leaned against the headboard, looking for all the world like a pair of lovers in the dim lighting.

Chen Wengang was truly exhausted, hovering on the edge of sleep. He no longer obsessed over asking Huo Niansheng why he was helping him. Probing casually like this from time to time—and never getting a real answer—simply meant the other man didn’t want to explain it to him.

Regardless, Huo Niansheng was well aware that he had absolutely nothing. Helping him was an utterly unprofitable endeavor.

Just on the verge of falling asleep, Chen Wengang felt warm breath against his ear again. It was Huo Niansheng leaning down to kiss him, his lips brushing against Chen Wengang’s right ear. This ear had also fallen victim to the tragedy; corroded by the strong acid, it had lost its original shape, leaving behind hardened scars and hyperplasic tissue.

Chen Wengang was jolted awake instantly. His reaction wasn’t dramatic, but he wasn’t accustomed to it either. “I won’t disturb your rest any longer.”

With that, he lifted the covers and got out of bed. Bidding Huo Niansheng goodnight, their one-night rendezvous ended right there. They didn’t share the bed for the rest of the night.

Huo Niansheng remained leaning against the headboard, watching him walk out the door without saying a word.

Chen Wengang returned to the guest bedroom and got into his own bed. He lay flat on his back. A few minutes later, the door suddenly opened again. Uninvited, Huo Niansheng swept his gaze around the room, looking for who knew what, before finally reaching out to confiscate the cigarettes and lighter.

He told Chen Wengang, “I advised you before, but you didn’t listen. Your wounds aren’t easy to heal; you should really quit smoking and put it away.”

After that, Huo Niansheng really did start keeping an eye on Chen Wengang, having the nanny watch him. Smoking was entirely out of the question, and unregulated alcohol consumption was no longer allowed either. At most, when they went out for Western food, they’d have a little wine with their meal. The alcohol content wasn’t high, and Chen Wengang had no objections.

As for their physical relationship, having crossed the line once, the second time became a matter of course. It was much easier, at least, forming a sort of tacit understanding. Half a month later, Huo Niansheng came home late one night and slipped into Chen Wengang’s bedroom.

There were a few more times after that, but they both continued to sleep in their own separate bedrooms, minding their own business.

It was a spatial division, as well as a psychological one. For Chen Wengang, the guest bedroom he had stayed in for so long could technically be considered his, but the master bedroom firmly remained the domain of the host. His path of activity within this apartment was exceptionally clear: his room, the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the balcony. Barring sexual encounters, he normally wouldn’t trespass into Huo Niansheng’s space.

When Huo Niansheng wasn’t around, Chen Wengang became an idle man with nothing to do.

He had heaps of time to kill, and Huo Niansheng didn’t restrict him. He could technically do whatever he wanted—read a book, watch movies, play games, cultivate plants, refine himself, or reflect on his life and plan the future. In short, there should have been meaningful things to fill his life. But for some reason, he just couldn’t muster any interest in anything. Every day he woke up, he just drifted aimlessly.

The television stayed on all day, from the morning news to the prime-time soap operas, and then to midnight variety show reruns. Auntie Meng thought Chen Wengang was always watching TV and would sometimes come over to nag him about straining his eyes. In truth, he merely left the screen running, letting the frames jump past one by one.

Especially on nights when Huo Niansheng wasn’t home and the auntie had gone back to her own place, the apartment would be entirely empty, and the TV wouldn’t be turned off all night.

Chen Wengang would drag his blankets out and sleep on the living room sofa. He kept the TV volume turned all the way down. The midnight talk show hosts and guests flapped their lips, the camera cutting back and forth across their faces as they talked endlessly and let out exaggerated laughs, but the sound was suppressed to a low murmur, serving as white noise to aid his sleep. Once the show finished, it would fade into a long string of commercials.

Once, the door suddenly clicked open in the dead of night. For whatever reason, Huo Niansheng had shown up, walking in right as this scene unfolded.

He paused, lightening his footsteps, assuming Chen Wengang had fallen asleep watching TV. He walked over to find the remote and turn it off.

Under the shifting, flickering light from the screen, half of Chen Wengang’s face drifted in and out of the shadows. Then, he sat up from the sofa, looking entirely lucid as he asked Huo Niansheng why he had come, if he had a social event nearby, and if he needed some honey water.

Huo Niansheng asked, “You weren’t asleep?”

Chen Wengang replied, “I was.”

In such a state, every day felt unbearably long from morning till night. But once he made it through, he realized that time was actually flying by.

In the blink of an eye, the Lunar New Year was approaching. Chen Wengang spent this Spring Festival in the hospital.

Auntie Meng expertly helped him pack his hospital necessities. Over the past few months, traveling back and forth to the hospital had become routine—sometimes for check-ups, sometimes for follow-up visits. This time, the hospitalization was for reconstructive surgery on his earlobe.

Compared to Chen Wengang himself, Huo Niansheng’s attitude towards his physical deformities was one of not giving up hope. He had even invited numerous specialists for consultations, flying them in from all over the country, attempting to patch Chen Wengang up, still trying to perform last-ditch salvage efforts on this flawed piece of work.

With such a medical lineup, it was hard for the surgery not to be a success. But the process inevitably involved the agony of needles and scalpels, something the patient had to endure on his own.

On New Year’s Eve, Auntie Meng was given time off, and Chen Wengang sent his caregiver away as well. It was a day for family reunions. Even patients with severe illnesses—as long as they weren’t bedridden in the ICU—would try to find a way to go home and celebrate the new year.

Chen Wengang stepped out of his ward and took a walk around the building. From the first floor to the sixth, it was eerily desolate, devoid of any warmth or life.

He went to the nurse’s station and chatted with the on-duty nurses for a bit, gathering around a tablet with them to watch the New Year Gala for a while.

Then he returned to his ward. It wasn’t until he was getting ready for bed that Chen Wengang noticed several missed calls on his phone.

He had set up this phone number later on, so not many people knew it. All the calls were from a single person.

He called Huo Niansheng back and heard the other man ask over the line, “Why didn’t you answer your phone? Where did you go?”

Chen Wengang recounted all his activities for the evening to him. He was interrupted once when someone in the background called Huo Niansheng’s name. Huo Niansheng seemed to move to a different location before continuing the call with Chen Wengang, chuckling lightly on the other end, “Why does that sound so boring?”

Chen Wengang replied casually, “It is a bit boring.”

Unexpectedly, Huo Niansheng said, “I’ll come see you tomorrow.”

Chen Wengang froze for a moment. “There’s no need. Don’t you have to celebrate the new year at home?”

Huo Niansheng said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s boring anyway; I might as well go find you. Go to sleep first. I’ll be there in the morning.”