Ch107.2 – After the Competition

Yu Hao dialled Cen Shan’s number outside and whispered, “Sis-in-law.”

There was a winter drizzle outside. Cen Shan’s voice wasn’t very steady as she said, “Darling, help me tell him that he’s right. Take care of him and get him to find someone who’s suitable for him. We should stop tormenting each other like this.”

Yu Hao said, “Sis-in-law……wait, don’t be impulsive……”

Cen Shan stopped speaking for a long time on the other end and sucked in her breaths like she had just finished crying. She slowly said, “He was halfway through speaking when he just hung up. I hadn’t even finished saying my part, you just……just let it be like this ba. You and Zhou Sheng can keep treating me like a Jiejie in the future, call me if something comes up, Jie loves you both. I won’t say anymore……bye.”

That night, Yu Hao kept chatting with Cen Shan on the phone and tried to talk her around. Only then did he know that Cen Shan had wanted to come over today, but she was forced to go to a rich second generation’s birthday party by her family. When she arrived at the competition venue, it had already been an hour since everyone left the place. She was wearing high heels and a short skirt, and she hadn’t called her family’s chauffeur; she had asked her friend to buy her a high-speed railway ticket to come over, and when she was fighting with Fu Liqun over the phone, she was standing outside the stadium in the cold while getting drenched in the rain.

Cen Shan asked Yu Hao not to tell Fu Liqun and to just let things stay that way. Yu Hao wanted to tell him several times, but in the end, he respected Cen Shan’s wishes. Zhou Sheng could tell that there was something off with Yu Hao, so he asked him to go back first. Yu Hao then hurriedly hailed a cab and picked up Cen Shan.

“Stay at our place ba.” Yu Hao quickly said.

Cen Shan’s expression was a little stupefied. Yu Hao quickly took off his jacket and put it on her.

“I’ll go home.” Cen Shan said, “Help me buy a high-speed railway ticket, darling, I don’t know how to.”

Cen Shan has never known how to even read a bus’s guideboard since she was a child, and she only started riding the subway after getting together with Fu Liqun. Yu Hao kept persuading her to go back to the house they rented, but Cen Shan said, “There’s no need, I really won’t go.”

So Yu Hao could only say, “Alright.”

Yu Hao bought a business-class seat for Cen Shan and sent her to the entrance of the high-speed railway station. This was the last train. When he saw the state Cen Shan was in, Yu Hao really felt panicked. In the meantime, he had sent Zhou Sheng a few messages to ask him what he should do, but Zhou Sheng didn’t reply to him. It was only when Cen Shan had entered the station that Zhou Sheng replied:

【It doesn’t matter, they’ll reconcile in a few months. They won’t really break up.】

Yu Hao thought, how could you play it off so lightly? Zhou Sheng sent another message:【I’m used to it, just comfort them a little. You feel so upset for them now, but believe me when I say you’ll want to slap their faces after they make up in a few months.】

Yu Hao thought, okay then, looks like it’s not the first time Fu Liqun and Cen Shan have broken up. Their love does seem really tiring; fortunately he doesn’t fight with Zhou Sheng like that. Zhou Sheng asked him to go home first to take a bath, sleep, and prepare for their final exams. After their match, he was on the verge of dying.

After Yu Hao took a bath, he leaned on the sofa in the living room. His hair had grown out quite a bit. In the middle of the night, Zhou Sheng dragged Fu Liqun back and threw him on the sofa, then went straight into the bathroom to take a bath and also to wash off the traces of vomit on his sweater.

“Gege!” Yu Hao quickly went to check on Fu Liqun.

Fu Liqun was crying like a 1.93m child.

Yu Hao thought of the phrase “your aunt isn’t your aunt anymore but your grandfather is still your grandfather”, and just felt both upset and amused. He sighed, then poured a glass of water for Fu Liqun. He covered him with a blanket and left him in the living room. He narrated the entire process to Zhou Sheng, while Zhou Sheng scrolled through his phone and said, “She won’t come.”

Yu Hao said, “If she came over for the night, they might have made up.”

“Do you think they’re like us?” Zhou Sheng said, “And make up after doing it once?” As he spoke, he turned over and pushed Yu Hao down.

Yu Hao moaned, “I’m about to fall apart, we just finished the basketball game, could you let me off?”

“Nope.” Zhou Sheng said all proper and serious, “I drank my Shibo’s Seahorse Wine, so now I have a lot of energy and no outlet to release it. You don’t need to move, just enjoy it.”

It was Yu Hao’s first time doing it with Zhou Sheng while his body was thoroughly spent. The ache left behind by the vigorous exercise in the morning made it difficult for him to move that night, and he even struggled to raise his hand. But Zhou Sheng still had an abundance of energy, which made Yu Hao shamefully feel like he had turned into a humiliating toy. On the other hand, the intense impact and stimulation that occurred in his body felt incomparably real at that moment.

When the body is in a state of extreme fatigue, desire seems to lose all restraint and control. It was Yu Hao’s first time losing all sense of control that night. When the glow of the morning sun streamed in, Zhou Sheng lay beside him face down, revealing the contour of his shoulder and back, which made him feel incredibly infatuated.

“It hurts so much.” Yu Hao’s whole body ached after he tried to prop himself up.

“What time is it?” Zhou Sheng woke up and quickly picked Yu Hao up to go take a bath. Their final exams were starting today. Fu Liqun was still sleeping on the sofa, and after he was shaken awake, he abruptly sprang up. In the midst of all their turmoil, they rushed to the college to end off their studies for this semester.

“I think I’m gonna fail.” Fu Liqun said helplessly, “I have no idea what I was being tested on at all, my head felt like it was spinning.”

Yu Hao comforted him at lunch, “Don’t think too much about it. Whenever we think we’re gonna fail, we never do.”

Fu Liqun hadn’t sobered up from his hangover. When he went to take his exam early in the morning, he bumped into Xue Long outside his examination venue and got scolded for the smell of alcohol that lingered on his body. Zhou Sheng came into the canteen pulling a very long face, looking very infuriated.

Yu Hao nudged him slightly under the table and cast him an inquiring gaze. Li Yangming had followed along too, and after some small talk, Li Yangming said, “Zhou Sheng, I heard that Xue Laoshi gave your father a call.”

Xue Long was causing trouble for Zhou Sheng again, and only Yu Hao was fine. Yu Hao began to think that it was now a little dangerous.

“I know.” Zhou Sheng said indifferently.

Li Yangming said, “I heard him talk about you and Yu Hao.”

Yu Hao was a bit nervous, “What did he say?”

“He said……uh……” Li Yangming thought about it for awhile, and didn’t really dare to say anything more.

“You can just say it.” Yu Hao said, “It’s okay.”

Li Yangming said, “He said, your classmates reported to him that the two of you often squeeze onto the same bed in the dorm and hug each other to sleep……”

Yu Hao thought that he had really underestimated Xue Long. If Xue Long had just said “the two of them are gay”, then perhaps Zhou Laichun wouldn’t have believed him. He would have just explained it as them being good bros, writing it off as ‘there’s nothing much if the kids have a good relationship, Xue Laoshi you’ve misunderstood’. But Xue Long was well-versed in the art of stirring up rumours; he just described the details without making any conclusions, and let Zhou Laichun digest the nauseating truth and actions by himself. In actuality, Yu Hao and Zhou Sheng seldom slept together in the dormitory. The bed was too small after all, so Yu Hao was always afraid of squeezing Zhou Sheng off, and it was even less likely for their classmates to have found them sleeping together.

Zhou Sheng continued picking up his food without much concern and said, “Looks like he saw it pretty clearly himself, must have peeped in every night through our balcony window.”

Li Yangming laughed a bit awkwardly. Yu Hao thought that Zhou Laichun had been a soldier before, so this might lead to two possibilities. One: he would be able to come around to it, and understand and respect them both. Two: he’s homophobic and is especially disgusted with such things.

“What else did he say?” Zhou Sheng asked.

Li Yangming, “He saw that I was around, so he didn’t say anything more.”

Yu Hao uttered an “un”, and the four of them didn’t say anything for a moment as they ate their lunch quietly. They each had their own thoughts. Fu Liqun was like a zombie today. He ate very little before he just stopped eating.

“Will you guys be performing during the college’s anniversary party?” Li Yangming changed the topic.

“Un.” Zhou Sheng answered absent-mindedly.

“We are?” Yu Hao said, “Why don’t I know about it?”

Fu Liqun said, “Kaikai told us. We didn’t want to in the first place, but we do now.”

Yu Hao said, “What are we doing? The two of you didn’t discuss it with me at all ba!”

“If you don’t want to perform you can just listen from below.” Zhou Sheng was frowning deeply as he said to Yu Hao, “It’s okay.”

Fu Liqun said, “But of course it would be better if you follow us and casually sing a song. Huang Ting and Ou Qihang are coming too as VIP guests. Kaikai arranged the program.”

Yu Hao, “Ok then, I’ll choose a song.” In any case, it’s not like he had practiced for very long the previous time. Now he had a whole group of people accompanying him, so it was even less of an issue. Now that he thought about it, compared to last year, Yu Hao felt like he had now taken full control of his own life.

“Then your father……”

“I’ll deal with him.” Zhou Sheng answered.

After his statistics exam was over, Yu Hao’s head was spinning. He was called to Chen Yekai’s dormitory. Chen Yekai didn’t force him either and just told him that he didn’t need to perform if he didn’t want to. Yu Hao was feeling vexed over Zhou Sheng’s father. Zhou Laichun didn’t call them, and it felt like a ticking time bomb that he didn’t know when would suddenly blow up.

Yu Hao never had any problems, but he didn’t want Zhou Sheng to feel frustrated. For the past few days, everything was still the same as usual. Zhou Sheng was still his chirpy self, but Yu Hao knew that Zhou Sheng was always deep in thought. There wasn’t anyone else in this world who knew Zhou Sheng as well as he does —— this guy usually kept silent, but he actually thinks things through by himself a lot.

Chen Yekai was selecting a song for Yu Hao, and after he heard Yu Hao’s worries, he casually said, “Plan on coming out of the closet?”

Yu Hao said, “What should I do?’

Chen Yekai was very relaxed, “Well, I don’t think coming out of the closet to one’s parents depends on whether you’re dating someone, but on what kind of life you want. Zhou Sheng’s future can not exclude his parents, or to be more precise, it can’t exclude his father. If his family can accept you guys, then of course it would be satisfactory for all parties involved.”

Yu Hao said, “I don’t think that’s possible. For me, the only thought I have is to depend on our own efforts to live……”

Chen Yekai smiled and said, “But in everyone’s heart, they would hope to obtain the support of their parents ba. I think Zhou Sheng is no exception.”

“Yes.” At this moment, Yu Hao suddenly understood how Zhou Sheng feels.

Zhou Sheng has always used his actions to express his indifference and even his resistance, but deep down, he still hoped to be acknowledged by his family. This was something Yu Hao had often neglected. For him, he had no more relatives in this world, so what kind of life he lived didn’t matter much, but Zhou Sheng was different.

“Just these two songs?” Chen Yekai asked.

“Uh, it’s not too good, right?” Yu Hao said, “The college’s anniversary is on Valentine’s.”

Chen Yekai said sincerely, “This song is practically voicing out my inner thoughts, as long as Zhou Sheng doesn’t mind.”

When Yu Hao returned home, he asked Zhou Sheng, and of course he didn’t mind. He simply nodded and continued quarrelling with Zhou Laichun who was on the other end of the call.

The time bomb was finally here. Yu Hao sat at the dining table and heard Zhou Sheng arguing loudly with his father and stared at him uneasily. He has always had the impression that Zhou Sheng was an aggressive and irascible person. But in careful retrospect, Zhou Sheng rarely acted out violently in real life. Most of the time, his irascible personality was just a pretense for him to achieve his objective. There were only three people who could really make him go mad: Yu Hao and his parents.

Zhou Sheng glanced at him, turned his phone on loudspeaker, and placed it on the table.

Zhou Laichun said, “It’s been so many years since the three of us had a meal together. What do you have against me? You have that much face?”

Zhou Sheng was on the verge of exploding. He forcibly repressed his anger and said, “I already said that I’m going to Australia for the New Year! I’ve already prepared the visa!”

“I’ll change it for you!” Zhou Laichun said, “Is a first-class seat and a five-star hotel not good enough for you? Must you leave on New Year’s Eve?”

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