Ten minutes later——
"Shh..."
Li Xiu tiptoed to open the door, turned around and gestured to Fang Qianan.
"My grandma is already asleep, don't wake her up."
The young man lowered his voice and only let Fang Qianan into his home after seeing him nod to show that he understood.
Li Xiu gave her slippers to Fang Qianan, who struggled to squeeze the front half of his foot into the half-worn slippers, and walked with a special kind of clumsiness.
The lights were off, and the house was gloomy in the early hours of the morning. The dull, muffled snoring of an elderly man drifted faintly from the pitch-black room. Li Xiu unconsciously held her breath and turned to glance at Fang Qianan behind her.
The visitor who came late at night followed him quietly, appearing very well-behaved.
However, Li Xiu still felt a little uncomfortable, although even he himself could not explain why he felt uncomfortable.
Li Xiu led Fang Qianan to his bedroom like a thief. After entering the room, Li Xiu quickly locked the door, isolating his grandmother's snoring outside. He leaned against the door and slowly breathed a sigh of relief.
"Fang Qianan, what's wrong with you?"
After calming down, Li Xiucai turned around and looked at Fang Qianan. The latter had taken the only chair in the room as soon as he entered, showing none of the reserved attitude he had when visiting someone else's home for the first time.
"Didn't I tell you? I had a fight with someone."
Fang Qianan sat backwards in his chair, resting his hands on the back of the chair to support his chin, and said nonchalantly.
Li Xiu frowned.
Just now downstairs, he gave the same vague answer.
There was silence in the room for a moment.
Fang Qianan stared at Li Xiu, as if he also realized Li Xiu's dissatisfaction, and then slowly added a few words.
"It's just...something happened, and I got into a fight with that old bastard dad. But let me emphasize, it was a one-on-many situation, so it turned out like this. And even if it was a one-on-many situation, I still ended up in a draw."
Fang Qianan spoke vaguely, and emphasized that he was not the only one being beaten.
Li Xiu lowered his eyes, and his brows furrowed even more tightly when he heard that Fang Qianan was beaten like this by his own father.
"I'm telling you, they're just minor scratches. I accidentally got scraped by a belt buckle. It's nothing serious. It just looks scary—"
Before Fang Qianan could finish his words, Li Xiu had already dug out various bruises medicines and iodine cotton swabs from the corner of the room and came to him.
Li Xiu: "Look up."
"Don't worry about the injuries on my body. They don't hurt. They will be healed in two days. Hiss, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts..."
The boy stared at the boy who had a face full of wounds but was trying hard to maintain a playful smile, and suddenly felt inexplicably irritated.
He poured hydrogen peroxide directly on the wound on Fang Qianan's body in an almost rude manner.
Fang Qianan groaned, his jaw muscles tensed, and the fake smile on his face finally disappeared.
A pair of hands reached out and applied the medicine to him neatly and efficiently.
The wound with the dressing still felt hot and stinging. Fang Qianan instinctively wanted to curse, but when he looked up, he met Li Xiu's lowered brows.
Someone's heartbeat suddenly skipped a beat.
"...I told you not to worry about it."
Fang Qianan's voice gradually became lower, and finally he just hummed in a voice as thin as a mosquito.
In the room, Li Xiu seemed unusually silent.
"Take off your clothes and lie down on the bed."
After cleaning up the wound on Fang Qianan that was exposed outside his clothes, he continued to speak to Fang Qianan in a cold tone.
"…What do you want to do to me?"
Fang Qianan was stunned for a few seconds, then he pulled the corner of his mouth and joked in an exaggerated manner.
Li Xiu stared at Fang Qianan in silence.
After a brief eye contact, Fang Qianan pulled the corners of his mouth unnaturally.
"Fuck, why are you so fierce?" The young school bully complained in a voice that only he (thought) could hear.
Then he turned to Li Xiu and raised his voice: "Do you know that in the whole city of A, you are the first person who dares to say 'get out' to me——"
"Fang Qianan, don't make me say it a third time. It's very late, I'm very sleepy, I just want to go to bed quickly."
"Tsk. Fine, I don't want to bother with you about this."
Fang Qianan muttered as he took off his shirt and, as Li Xiu requested, lay down on the narrow single bed in the room.
Sure enough, just as Li Xiu thought, the bruises on Fang Qianan's body were even more serious than the wounds on his face.
The worst thing was his shoulder, which had been injured in the afternoon and was now swollen and slightly shiny.
Li Xiu took a deep breath.
My grandmother is old, and there may not be anything else at home, but the medicinal wine for headaches, fevers, bruises and injuries is enough.
The cold medicinal wine was poured directly onto the bruises on Fang Qianan's body. The boy's palms felt slightly warm, and he began to rub them vigorously while dipping them in the wine.
The sudden pain came along with the pungent smell of medicinal wine. Fang Qianan lay on the bed, unable to hold back, and shivered and sobbed.
"Oh my god, Ah Xiu, please be gentler...hiss...it hurts so much, my bones are about to break...help me, how can you be more brutal than my dad? It hurts so much...ah..."
Under Li Xiu's hands, Fang Qianan was like a live fish that had just been thrown on the chopping board, jumping so hard that he almost fell off the bed.
"It hurts... Please, Xiu, go slower... hiss... really... be gentler... um..."
The boy's turbid breathing and hoarse plea for mercy echoed in my ears.
Li Xiu told him several times to be quiet, but Fang Qianan just breathed even harder.
"I told you, shut up!"
As Li Xiu listened to Fang Qianan's voice becoming more and more subtle, her cheeks suddenly felt hot. Unable to bear it any longer, she slapped him in the face.
"Snap—"
In the narrow room, the crisp sound of the slap was almost deafening.
Li Xiu only felt the 1.9-meter-tall school bully's body bounce heavily under his palm, and then Fang Qianan suddenly became quiet.
Li Xiu: ...
He pursed his lips.
Fang Qianan buried his head in his arms and remained silent. However, his neck, including his earlobes, which were exposed to Li Xiu's sight, were so red that blood almost dripped out.
The location of that slap just now...
Li Xiu suddenly looked away.
"It'll be fine once the blood clots are rubbed out. Aren't you usually pretty strong? Why are you crying out in pain?" He quickly treated all the areas Fang Qianan could, and a thin layer of sweat soon seeped out of his forehead. "But you'd better go to the hospital."
The boy said calmly, and decided to pretend that the little accident had never happened.
…
"Tsk, it smells terrible. I told you to ignore it, but only someone as skinny as you who'll fall over in the wind would make such a fuss."
As a result, Fang Qianan's obedience only lasted for a short time.
After Li Xiu finished the treatment and put the medical kit away, the former school bully instantly turned over and sat up. He raised his hand and gently stroked the shoulder that Li Xiu had just rubbed for him, while staring at Li Xiu's back, muttering non-stop as if he was complaining.
Li Xiu stuffed the cardboard box back into the corner of the bookcase and listened to the guy's chatter behind him. The vein on his forehead jumped.
Fang Qianan kept saying that he didn't need to worry about the injuries on his body. However, when Li Xiu was applying medicine on him just now, he could see clearly that those were not minor injuries that would heal on their own without any care.
Not only his head and face, but Fang Qianan's body hidden under his clothes was also covered with wounds. Even Li Xiu felt a little horrified when he saw it.
Of course, from another perspective, if Fang Qianan's injuries were not so terrible.
Given Li Xiu's personality, he probably wouldn't agree to Fang Qianan's request at all.
["What's wrong with you… No, how do you know where my home is?"]
"I asked someone."
["…"]
"Are you touched that I came all the way to see you? Since I finally found your house... can I stay at your house for one night?"
In fact, Fang Qianan did not play the victim at that time, and his tone when speaking could even be described as casual.
Li Xiu stared at the uninvited guest downstairs, but he couldn't force a word of refusal out of his lips.
*
After applying medicine to Fang Qianan, Li Xiu yawned.
He accidentally glanced at the time and immediately gasped.
"No, if I don't go to sleep, I'm going to fail my morning study session tomorrow."
Li Xiu's face was pale and he muttered to himself.
After searching the room for a long time, Li Xiu finally found an oversized T-shirt that smelled of mothballs from the corner of the closet.
Those were old clothes left here by the previous landlord. I don't know which supermarket chain it came from. The scary red, blue and yellow color scheme and the slogan were so bright that it was blinding. The only advantage was probably that it was loose enough for a guy like Fang Qianan to squeeze in.
When Fang Qianan put it on, the effect looked... very magical.
Even Li Xiu had to admit that even though Fang Qianan was beaten like a pig's head, wearing the cheapest and most ridiculous advertising T-shirt, and sleeping in a narrow and dilapidated room in the urban village, he still had a wonderfully noble temperament.
He and Li Xiu are from completely different worlds. If it weren't for the ghost, the two of them would probably never have any contact after leaving Kaiming.
However, tonight, Li Xiu has to sleep in the same bed with someone like Fang Qianan.
"Actually, a young master like you should have plenty of places to stay overnight, right?"
Li Xiu looked at Fang Qianan and couldn't help but ask.
"Oh, there's nothing of the kind. I don't have many friends."
Fang Qianan was stunned for a moment, then blurted out.
"If it weren't for you this time, I would have had to sleep in the car. It's always been like this before, but after getting beaten up, I'd curl up in the sports car, and my whole body would really ache when I woke up the next day." The tall boy said calmly, not knowing whether to call it playing the victim or being Versailles.
"Oh, if you hadn't treated me to hot cocoa today, I wouldn't bother with you."
Li Xiu was silent for a moment, then replied in a messy manner.
"Forget it, go to sleep."
As he spoke, Li Xiu retreated to a corner, intending to change into his pajamas.
In his panic, Li Xiu did not notice that the moment he took off his shirt, Fang Qianan, who was looking down at his phone, happened to look in his direction.
Then, Fang Qianan's eyes widened.
The author has something to say:
Fang Gou: Although he is young, he is already an excellent henpecked man.