At four in the morning, Pei Yang was dead drunk in a bar on a street corner. He lay half-sprawled across a small round table piled with bottles; the slightest movement of his arm could knock one off.
Crash-
Who knew how many bottles he had broken by now? The bartender came over to clean up, already used to it. After a moment's hesitation, he gave the barely conscious Pei Yang a gentle shake. "Sir? Are you all right, sir?"
"I... I'm fine." Pei Yang lifted his graceful neck, his alcohol-hazed eyes glittering like stars. "Another bottle..."
"Sir, you really can't drink any more." Looking at the mess on the floor, the bartender said helplessly, "We're closed. Sit up and take a look. You're the only one left."
"Oh? Time to go home?" Pei Yang struggled to prop himself up and looked around, but everything swam before his eyes. Only after rubbing them could he make out that the bar really was almost empty.
The bartender glanced at the cashier yawning behind the counter and said quietly, "Please try to understand, sir. We can't leave until all the customers are gone... You've been drinking for hours, too. Any more won't be good for your health. Could you... settle your bill?"
"Sorry. Then... then I won't keep you from... from going home." Pei Yang tried to get off the barstool, but the moment his feet touched the floor, his limp body slid downward. The bartender hurried to catch him. "Careful, sir."
Pei Yang was tall, and however thin he was, he still had some weight to him. It took the bartender considerable effort to drag him over to the counter.
"The bill for table thirteen."
The cashier glanced at Pei Yang and said impatiently, "Already worked it out. One thousand six hundred and eighty-two. All he's done is keep us from going home."
"Keep it down..." the bartender chided her quietly. "Saying that right in front of a customer-are you crazy? Aren't you afraid he'll complain?"
"He's so drunk, can he even understand what I'm saying? Such a handsome guy, and he turns out to be a drunk. What a waste..."
"What would you do if he weren't a drunk?"
"Take him home, obviously..."
The two laughed for a while right in front of the dazed Pei Yang, then helped him successfully pay his bill.
"Th... thank you."
Pei Yang pulled away from the bartender and staggered toward the exit. He wanted to call a designated driver, but he had only just taken out his phone when he fell to the floor with a thud-.
"Huh? Sir?!" The bartender had just taken off his uniform. Turning around, he saw his former customer lying on the floor, his beautiful profile pressed against the cold ground. His long, straight legs had nowhere to go and were bent together. He looked truly pitiful.
"Sir..." The bartender hurried to help him up and suggested, "Why don't you ask a friend to pick you up? In your state, going home alone could be dangerous."
Pei Yang tried hard to open his eyes, wanting to see what the kind bartender who kept talking in his ear looked like.
He didn't understand. Even a stranger he had met by chance could show him such kindness. He had known Xia Jingmo for six years. Six years. Even if his motives for approaching him hadn't been pure at first, those six years together couldn't have been a lie. Did Xia Jingmo really not feel even the slightest affection for him?
"Friends?" Pei Yang murmured. "I don't think..."
He didn't think he had any friends.
"What... what did you say?"
Pei Yang didn't finish, because he felt ashamed.
He was in his twenties, yet after drinking himself senseless, he couldn't find a single person to take him home. It was hardly something to be proud of.
"Friends... friends, right? I have them. Lots of friends." A tear slipped from the corner of Pei Yang's eye as he smiled. "I have... have lots of friends. Believe me... do you believe me?"
"That's great! Hurry and find someone who's free to pick you up."
The bartender helped him unlock his phone with facial recognition.
With trembling hands, Pei Yang began scrolling aimlessly through his WeChat contacts.
The city lights had gone out, sinking into a night of deep dreams. Even the ginkgo tree in the courtyard had fallen asleep, and the whole room lay in gentle peace. Feng Wanting had finally managed to coax Feng Chuxun to sleep and had only just left his room when the phone in his pajama pocket rang.
Feng Wanting frowned and glanced at the clock on the living room wall. It read 4:37 a.m.
Who would choose such an ungodly hour to call him? Feng Wanting covered the speaker and unlocked his phone, ready to answer and curse the caller out, only to freeze at the contact name in the middle of the screen.
Pei Yang.
A glowing fissure split the pitch-black sky. Feng Wanting's fingers whitened around his phone. Just before the call was about to end automatically, he answered with a crisp, clear "Hello."
"Feng Wanting..." Pei Yang's voice sounded different from usual, and Feng Wanting didn't recognize it at first.
"Feng Wanting?! Chairman... Feng, hello? Can you hear me... hear me talking?"
Feng Wanting paused. "Pei Yang, have you been drinking?"
"Just... a little."
"A little? It doesn't sound like a little."
His tongue was tangled, his voice cloyingly soft. There was no way he had only had a little.
"Never mind all that..." Pei Yang drew a heavy breath. "Come... come get me. You can... fuck me for free..."
"What?" Feng Wanting almost thought he had misheard. "Pei Yang, what nonsense are you talking about?"
"Um... um..." Feng Wanting received no reply from Pei Yang. Someone else took over the phone. "Hello, I'm a bartender here. Your friend has drunk himself pretty much unconscious. He was probably just talking nonsense. Please come pick him up as soon as you can."
"..."
In other words, Pei Yang could very well be lying in someone else's arms right now. Feng Wanting's brows drew together in displeasure. "Send me the location."
"Of course, of course."
A location immediately popped up on WeChat. Pulling off his robe, Feng Wanting said, "Take good care of him. Don't let him talk any more nonsense. I'll be right there."
After hanging up, Feng Wanting threw on some clothes and went to the garage to get his car.
When he arrived, the quiet main room of the poorly patronized bar held only two employees, a man and a woman. They were sitting drowsily on the steps, watching over Pei Yang as he lay on the floor.
Pei Yang wore perfectly ordinary office clothes. Alcohol and body heat had left his white shirt rumpled, its collar hanging loosely open to reveal a stretch of cool, pale collarbone. The lines of his legs, wrapped in black trousers, extended through the dim light like an indecorous stroke of dark ink-bold, yet absurd.
Feng Wanting stood to one side and watched him for a long time. Pei Yang breathed softly, his lashes casting delicate shadows across his cheeks, like the wings of a white crane.
The first to notice Feng Wanting was the cashier, who was leaning shoulder to shoulder with the bartender. Her eyes widened, and she slapped the bartender's shoulder. "Hey, hey! Stop sleeping, wake up. He's here."
The exhausted bartender sprang up from the steps, intending to help Feng Wanting lift Pei Yang.
"Don't touch him." Feng Wanting bent down. As he helped Pei Yang up, a low, hoarse groan escaped Pei Yang's throat, like a murmur in his sleep.
"Pei Yang, wake up. It's me," Feng Wanting called patiently.
Pei Yang's brows instantly creased, and he struggled a little. The movement lifted a corner of his shirt hem, the contours of his waist and abdomen appearing and disappearing between the folds.
"Feng Wanting?" Pei Yang addressed him by his full name, opening his eyes with difficulty. "You came?"
Something seemed to crack in Feng Wanting's composed expression. He hastily lowered his eyes, his Adam's apple bobbing silently.
Pei Yang was a drunken mess, yet he was still breathtakingly beautiful.
Like a cold, keen sword that had finally consented to bend in the night, yet still retained the lingering bite of its edge.
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