The next morning, sunlight visited Shu's small apartment through the gap in the curtains as usual, leaving behind an "I was here" mark on the floor.
Rice Cake crouched beside the signature formed by the sunlight, tilting its head as it fought with its own instincts for a moment, before reaching out a paw and batting at it in defeat.
Sure enough, cats were simply incapable of resisting the temptation of a spot of light.
Kiana squatted next to Rice Cake, deeply agreeing with this sentiment. Then, staring at that beam of sunlight, her eyes gradually glazed over.
Oh no, what do I do? I want to catch it too!
Compared to the brightly lit living room, Shu's bedroom was still pitch black, perfectly meeting all the requirements for someone sleeping in.
As for Shu, he was tortured awake by a splitting headache.
He felt like he hadn't just slept, but had been passed out cold for the entire night. Waking up, his lips were chapped, he was desperately thirsty, his whole body ached, and his brain was spasming...
He felt more than a little unwell.
Clutching his forehead, Shu rolled over twice before struggling to sit up. Only then did he realize he was covered in a thin layer of sweat, feeling hot and sticky, which made him even more miserable.
Was waking up actually this painful of an experience?
So this was a hangover...
Shu did know why he had ended up like this... To be honest, it was almost exactly as he had predicted in the past.
Previously, Kiana had asked Shu if there was anything he had wanted to do but had never done... Actually, Shu really did have something like that in the past.
About ten years ago... when he was nearing adulthood, Shu had fantasized about what he would be like when drunk.
Back then, he wanted to gauge his approximate alcohol tolerance, to see exactly how much he needed to drink before passing out or drinking himself into a stupor.
Baijiu[T/N: A strong Chinese distilled liquor], red wine, beer, cocktails—he wanted to try them all, just to ensure he wouldn't embarrass himself by getting drunk under the table by someone in the future.
As for why he never actually went through with it...
Because Shu was still a little afraid that he was the type of guy who would immediately start being a menace to society and a plague upon humanity the moment he got some alcohol in his system. Without someone watching him, he didn't dare to get drunk.
Furthermore, Shu realized he didn't need to worry about being forced to drink at all, because absolutely no one was bored enough to try and force drinks on him...
Uh... well, now someone was.
Accompanied by the memory of Kiana eagerly handing him glass after glass of various alcohols, more memories came flooding back like a tidal wave.
Great. His memory was completely intact. The ultimate excuse for evading responsibility known as "blacking out" had failed to trigger.
Every frame of his memory was crystal clear, every scene vividly colored and accompanied by sound, as if someone had recorded his memories from last night from start to finish.
And then shoved it all back into his brain this morning, even thoughtfully highlighting the key points.
You totally lost your filter.
?
Shu felt there was really no need for his memory to be this intact... Blacking out truly was a fantastic excuse to dodge responsibility.
There were no violent incidents after he drank, which was a stroke of incredible luck... If Shu had discovered he was the kind of scum who suddenly became arrogant, picked fights everywhere, or bullied the weak after drinking, his life would effectively be over.
He would have straight-up pulled a "The King descends from the heavens, splatting onto the ground in sheer shame."
Hmm... there was also no scene of him passionately confessing his love to a trash can on the side of the road. At the very least, he could be certain there wouldn't be any horrifying short videos of him circulating on the internet for eternity.
Overall, his drunk personality seemed quite good. After drinking, he didn't cry or throw tantrums; he just talked a billion times more than usual.
You totally lost your filter.
Shu hesitated for a moment, then began to tentatively recall the events.
He could set aside the part where he belted out songs for now.
Those memories were actually quite cathartic. He had sung every song to his heart's content, not caring if it sounded good, only caring if it felt good.
What's a pitch? What's a vocal range?
He had just strained his neck and belted out high notes using his pure chest voice. After finishing every line, he could experience a sense of exhaustion and suffocation. The feeling of recklessly venting his emotions made Shu linger on the memory even now.
More importantly, there was no need to worry about a noise complaint. He could just treat the microphone as an emotional dumping ground and scream into it.
Going to the KTV alone had been the right call!
Kiana's presence last night had still affected his performance... Belting out C6 high notes with pure chest voice for the entire song—was that girl even human?!
It was satisfying, truly satisfying.
And his neck aching was truly aching.
But that wasn't the main point.
The main point was the things he had said last night.
What exactly had he said?
His memory was like a flipped-open grudge notebook, recording the evidence of his crimes page by page in crystal clear detail.
It was roughly after a love song finished. Kiana, on a sudden whim, had asked him, "Shu, have you ever dated anyone?"
He remembered leaning against the sofa, still panting, and answering without even thinking.
"No."
This was a very normal answer.
But he felt those two words were too thin, so he added, "I'm a certified, purebred 'single-since-birth' specimen."
How could he have said something like that?
But the truly terrifying part came after.
Kiana was probably amused by his "purebred singleton" comment, so she casually asked another question: "Then have you ever thought about how you'd want to date?"
Shu closed his eyes.
He didn't want to remember anymore, but his memories refused to cooperate.
Upon hearing Kiana's question back then, he had absolutely exploded.
"What do you mean, 'how to date'? I've never even thought about that crap in my entire life!"
"The kind of 'dating' people do nowadays—how is that even dating?! Huh?! What even is that garbage?!" He remembered being highly agitated, waving his arms and stomping his feet.
"Fast-food romance, I spit on it!"
"Meet today, get 'together' tomorrow, and break up the day after!"
"Post a blurry couple photo on WeChat Moments where you can't even make out their facial features, and that counts as making it 'official'?"
"Change your profile picture to solid black, post a status saying 'Heartbroken' or 'Goodbye Youth,' and that counts as going through a breakup?"
"Break up my a**!"
"What did you even lose?! You don't even know each other's full names, whether they have pets at home, or if eating cilantro makes them gag, yet you have the audacity to say you 'loved' them? Loved my foot!"
"Being disloyal and unfaithful, binding yourselves together for mutual benefit, torturing each other by screaming insults over WeChat until 2 AM!
"Calculating against each other over who paid for an extra cup of milk tea—you dare slap the word 'Love' onto your foreheads over anything, and then hold up your phones to tell the whole world: 'Look, this is love!'
"F*** that kind of romance! F*** it all."
He had even sworn. He had said it through gritted teeth, his eyes burning hot.
"I refuse to acknowledge that as romance!
"I feel like in this world filled with cheap, fast-food romance, I'm an unarmed scholar carrying a pen onto a battlefield!
"Do you understand?! Other people are spraying machine guns, driving tanks over everything, making out and jumping into bed the moment they meet, calling each other 'hubby,' 'wifey,' 'babe,' and 'my love.' Meanwhile, I'm still over there overthinking whether to start my first love letter with 'To my dearest' or 'I hope this letter finds you well.'
"My f***ing pen is out of ink! What am I supposed to fight them with?! How am I supposed to reason with this world?!
"And why the hell does love have to be tied to external abilities anyway?! Why?!
"Those originally utterly average guys—the kind who wouldn't even make a splash if you threw them into a sea of people!
"Just because they suddenly acquired some special abilities, love just f**ing swarms them like flies to sht?!
"Do those girls actually like you as a person, or do they just like the status attached to you?!
"Without those superpowers, would people really not give you a second glance?!
"If you weren't in that position of power, would you not even have the right to speak to others?!
"Without those extraordinary accidents, is it completely impossible for two people to fall in love?!
"Is love an accident, or is it an inevitability?!
"Why is it that if you swap in a different person, a different face, a different guy possessing those same abilities, he can just effortlessly take everything that originally belonged to you?!
"If that person became useless, had nothing, and accomplished nothing, would the person who kept claiming to 'love' him leave him in disgust? Or would their paths just never cross in the first place?!
"That's a load of bullsh*t love!"