The private room, a body scrub, and the young master's hard-won home turf

The lobby was heavily air-conditioned.

Lu Chuan and Zhao Yifan walked in through the glass doors.

Han Dong was standing beside a carved wooden pillar.

The moment he saw them, he acted as though he had found his own family, excitedly raising a burly arm and waving it hard in the air.

"Old Lu! Yifan! Over here!"

His booming Northeast China voice sounded just a little out of place in the lobby of the upscale spa, where so much attention had been paid to soundproofing and atmosphere.

But Han Dong didn't care in the slightest.

He strode up to them in a few steps, still peering over Lu Chuan's shoulder at the upscale drop-off area outside, unwilling to give up.

"You two finally made it."

Han Dong scratched his head, his face full of curiosity.

"Old Lu, how come you were late this morning?"

Lu Chuan didn't break stride.

Meeting Han Dong's curious gaze, he didn't hesitate for even half a second. His tone was as casual as if he were saying he'd eaten two steamed buns for breakfast.

"Stopped to get gas on the way."

"That made us late."

Lu Chuan tossed out the reason for their tardiness.

Han Dong waved a big hand and grinned, unconcerned.

"Ah, no problem."

"Boss Chen and I didn't get here that long ago anyway. The sofas here are nice and soft, so a few extra minutes sitting on them was no loss."

Chen Ziang had both hands in the pockets of his casual trousers, holding himself with practiced composure.

"It's all right."

Chen Ziang managed an easy smile.

"As long as everyone's here."

After all, at this upscale spa, where his father held a gold membership,

he, Chen Ziang, was the true host.

"Let's go. No point standing around in the lobby."

Chen Ziang naturally took charge of the group and laid out the plans for the gathering.

"I already had the front desk make the arrangements."

He raised his wrist and checked the time, his tone carrying an unmistakable air of lavish confidence.

"First we'll go to our private room. Wash off the sweat and cool down."

"Once we're clean, we'll head straight to the seafood and wagyu buffet. Go all out there, and don't stand on ceremony with me. Once we've had our fill, we'll come back and soak in a private hot spring."

Chen Ziang looked at Han Dong, whose eyes were already lighting up, and smiled.

"If we're tired later, I'll have the therapists come over and give us the full post-sun skin-repair spa treatment."

Finally, he dropped the biggest announcement of the day.

"We're not going back to school tonight."

"Since we're here, we'll sleep in the luxury suites until we wake up naturally. We can take our time going back tomorrow at noon."

The moment he laid out that smooth, flowing spending plan,

the dejection and awkwardness vanished from Chen Ziang, and the halo of a Jiangcheng young master enveloped him once more.

This was the territory he knew best.

"Holy crap!"

Han Dong was so excited he could have done a somersault on the spot.

"A bath first, then wagyu? And we're staying the night?"

He slapped his thigh, his voice cracking with excitement.

"Boss Chen, you're my real brother from a different father and mother!"

Zhao Yifan stood quietly to the side as before, nodding politely and going along with Chen Ziang's plans.

Lu Chuan didn't interrupt Chen Ziang at this point either.

He knew perfectly well that Chen Ziang was hosting this gathering and paying good money for it. It was only natural that he wanted to regain some face in a spending environment he knew well.

A waitress in a front-fastening uniform stepped forward.

She folded her hands in front of her and bowed slightly.

"Honored guests, please follow me this way."

The routes through this kind of upscale private club were designed to be secluded and complex.

There were no tacky signs with big red arrows.

Every passage was bathed in the warm yellow light of spotlights, with wooden latticework lining both sides of the corridors and a faint scent of essential oils in the air. Anyone unfamiliar with the place could easily lose their way inside.

The waitress led the way.

The four men followed behind her.

Just as they reached a discreet fork in the corridors,

before the waitress at the front had said which way to go,

Lu Chuan's feet had already turned naturally toward the corridor on the left, which led to the changing area and private rooms.

He hadn't even looked for a sign. His muscle memory had already made the correct choice for him.

In his previous life, he had walked through this maze of a place too many times in his efforts to enter Jiangcheng's circles of the rich and powerful.

Which path led to the gold membership area,

which path led to the platinum private hot springs-

he could find them with his eyes closed.

Just then, Lu Chuan abruptly realized what he had done.

He'd gone too far.

The familiarity he had just displayed without thinking was far too conspicuous in a place he was supposedly seeing for the first time.

Lu Chuan stopped himself in his tracks.

Instead, he deliberately slowed by half a beat and shifted his weight back.

He didn't want to spoil Chen Ziang's fun.

The young master was paying today. If he went around showing off as though he knew more than the host, that wouldn't be a display of ability; it would be a lack of emotional intelligence.

Without drawing attention to himself, Lu Chuan fell back to Zhao Yifan's side.

He handed the lead completely back to Chen Ziang, who was walking ahead.

Neither Chen Ziang nor Han Dong, who was busy looking around, noticed that extremely subtle change in his movements.

But Zhao Yifan, walking beside Lu Chuan,

took in the whole scene clearly with the eyes hidden behind his nonprescription glasses.

It was as though something had gently tapped Zhao Yifan's heart.

He felt more and more that there was an unfathomable contradiction about Lu Chuan.

He clearly knew the layout of this top-tier money-burning den down to his bones, yet he could also naturally sheathe his edge at any time or place, giving others ample face and a graceful way out.

That kind of maturity

was not something an eighteen-year-old student who had just stepped out of high school could possibly possess.

The waitress stopped in front of a heavy, carved solid-wood door.

She gently pushed it open.

"Honored guests, this is your private room."

Han Dong was the first to squeeze inside.

The moment he entered, the big man from Northeast China froze.

The room was ridiculously spacious.

The outer section was a lounge with a Persian carpet, a huge leather sofa, and a refreshment counter piled with fresh fruit.

And in the inner section,

there was no enormous communal pool crammed with hundreds of people, as there would be at a public bathhouse.

Nor was there a scene of men standing bare-chested in rows, rinsing themselves off and borrowing shampoo from one another.

Instead, there was a row of completely separate, single-person bathing cubicles with frosted-glass doors.

Standing by the door, the waitress explained in a gentle voice.

"To ensure absolute privacy for our honored guests,

bathing, treatments, and changing are all done separately. You may each wash in your own cubicle."

After hearing her out, Han Dong scratched the back of his head.

He walked over to the individual cubicles and took a look, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper.

"Wait."

Han Dong turned and looked at Chen Ziang, utterly baffled.

"Isn't this a bit too fancy?"

He slapped his thigh, his voice rising a few notches without his realizing it.

"When a bunch of grown men come to a bathhouse, aren't they supposed to go bare-chested, sit in one big pool soaking and chatting, and face each other in the nude?"

"If everyone's shut up in a little glass box to wash, how's that any different from showering back at the dorm?"

When Chen Ziang heard that, the speechlessness on his face was practically overflowing.

He took half a step back and folded his arms across his chest.

"What are you trying to do?"

Chen Ziang looked at Han Dong as though he were a monster.

"Who wants to face you naked? Do you have some kind of weird preference?"

Han Dong's face flushed bright red in an instant.

How could a bona fide straight man from Northeast China stand such slander?

"Cut the crap!"

Han Dong was so worked up that the veins stood out on his neck.

"That's not what I meant!"

"I mean, the soul of a bathhouse is the body scrub! If everyone's shut up in their own little cubicle to wash..."

He pointed at his back and raised a hard-hitting question of logic, utterly convinced he was in the right.

"Then what happens to your back when it's time for the scrub?"

"Who scrubs whose? Are you supposed to reach it yourself with a brush?"

The moment that question landed,

the air in the private room froze.

Chen Ziang opened his mouth, but it was as though a wad of cotton had lodged in his throat.

The question had completely stumped him.

As a southern young master who sought refined experiences, he usually enjoyed dry saunas, steam rooms, or professional essential-oil massages when he came to places like this.

He had no experience at all with a bathing culture where people scrubbed the grime off one another.

Chen Ziang's face went red, then pale, but for a long moment he couldn't squeeze out a single word.

Just as the atmosphere was about to slide into awkwardness,

Lu Chuan pulled out an armchair and sat down.

"We can book body scrubs."

Lu Chuan's voice rang out calmly and steadily as he picked up the conversation without making a show of it.

He looked up at the waitress standing by the door, perfectly naturally.

"The private-room area here should have separate body-scrub rooms too, right?"

"So there's no need to get scrubbed in front of everyone out in the bathing area."

The waitress immediately gave him a standard, proper smile.

"Yes, sir."

Lu Chuan picked up a cup of warm tea from the coffee table.

"Please arrange a professional scrub attendant for each of the four of us later."

"Of course. I'll contact the body-scrub department for you right away."

Following Lu Chuan's lead, the waitress gave Han Dong a detailed explanation.

"Please rest assured, sir. We have completely private, single-person body-scrub rooms."

"Bathing, back-scrubbing, and rinsing can all be done separately in different rooms. Our attendants are professionals, so you absolutely won't feel embarrassed."

Hearing that,

Han Dong's hanging heart finally settled back into place.

He let out a long sigh of relief and slapped the leather sofa.

"Now that makes sense!"

His face was full of satisfaction, as though he had rediscovered the ultimate truth of life.

"That's what I thought. At a place this expensive, if you couldn't even get your back scrubbed, spending the money would feel far too frustrating."

"As long as there's a scrub attendant, I'm satisfied."

Chen Ziang seized the perfect way out, hurriedly coughed twice, and took control of the situation again.

"Ahem."

He adjusted his collar, forcing himself to save face.

"That's exactly what I meant just now."

"The facilities and services here are comprehensive. I just didn't have time to explain them in detail earlier."

Lu Chuan sat on the sofa.

He lowered his head and gently blew at the tea leaves floating in his cup.

He didn't expose Chen Ziang's little show of bravado, instead letting it pass as though it were only natural.

The timely way he smoothed things over

made Chen Ziang breathe a long sigh of relief. Without realizing it, Chen Ziang looked at Lu Chuan with a few more traces of indescribable gratitude in his eyes.

The air conditioning in the private room was running full blast.

As it blew over them, it completely dispelled the last traces of heat they had built up during military training.

With the knot in Han Dong's heart untied, the hunger worms in his belly instantly began to rebel.

He rubbed his flat stomach and leaned in toward Chen Ziang, his eyes glowing green.

"Boss Chen."

Only one thing was on his mind now.

"So when exactly are we eating at the seafood and Wagyu buffet?"

"I feel like I could fit a whole cow in my stomach right now. If I don't eat soon, I'm seriously going to start chewing on my slippers."

By now, Chen Ziang had really gotten the hang of keeping things under control.

He stood up and began undoing his shirt buttons, making the decision with absolute finality.

"We'll do this properly.

"First, we'll each shower in our own stalls and wash away all the stinking sweat from the past dozen or so days.

"Then we'll go to the separate body-scrubbing room and really experience the masters' technique."

Chen Ziang hung the clothes he had taken off in the deluxe wardrobe.

"Once we're clean and presentable from head to toe, we'll head straight out to the seafood and Wagyu buffet area and eat as much as we want.

"Once we've eaten and drunk our fill, we'll come back and soak in the private hot spring.

"Later, we'll get a restorative spa treatment, and tonight we'll lie down right here and sleep till we don't know day from night."

As soon as this flawless plan for pampering was settled,

Han Dong howled with excitement and started yanking wildly at his short-sleeved camouflage shirt, wishing he could rush into the bathing area in a single second.

Zhao Yifan set his shoulder bag on the storage rack beside him.

Lu Chuan stood up as well.

He put down his cup and casually draped his light gray jacket over the back of a genuine leather chair.

The attendant stood by the door and bowed slightly.

"Honored guests, please change into your bathrobes."

Warm yellow light poured down, and a faint mist of water vapor mingled with fragrance through the wooden corridor.

In this absolutely quiet, absolutely secluded private space,

for the four young men of dorm 504,

a truly unguarded gathering of relaxation among brothers,

had only just begun.