Quack, quack, quack

"What the fuck are you talking about?!" Yin Sufang took a step back, his heart pounding with alarm.

"Then what does me sleeping with someone have to do with you?" Pei Yang asked calmly.

Yin Sufang choked, his expression betraying a telling embarrassment.

Pei Yang didn't want to waste any more words on him. He turned on his aching legs and walked away, leaving Yin Sufang standing there, red-faced.

At the same time, Feng Wanting woke up.

He hadn't slept this long since he'd fallen ill.

Looking at the digital clock on the wall, Feng Wanting did a quick calculation. He'd actually slept a full nine hours.

Both his body and mind felt at ease. Feng Wanting let out a soft breath, finally understanding why some people enjoyed doing these things so much.

All the credit belonged to... the man beside him.

Feng Wanting propped himself up and slowly turned his head.

The other pillow was empty.

Feng Wanting: "?"

The man who had been panting beneath him last night was gone.

Feng Wanting's brows drew together slightly. Bare-chested, he searched the suite, but there was no sign of another person.

He stood stunned for three seconds before it sank in.

The man had run off.

Why?

Utterly baffled, Feng Wanting turned on the phone he'd left on the couch. As soon as the screen lit up, WeChat and text notifications chimed in a frantic cacophony, like an impatient symphony.

He didn't want to look at a single one. Instead, he returned to the bedroom to see whether last night's man had left anything behind. A glass slipper, perhaps...

The answer was no.

Aside from the somewhat rumpled bed, everything was so clean it barely looked as though anyone had been there. But Feng Wanting soon noticed a change on the nightstand.

On the clean nightstand sat an opened box of condoms and several glaring red banknotes.

Feng Wanting didn't understand what they meant. He picked up the stack and counted it: eight hundred yuan in crisp new bills, with no contact information or message written on them.

Feng Wanting hated guessing what other people were thinking. It was exhausting and pointless.

He admitted last night had been wonderful, but at most, that was because of the sex, not the person.

So what difference did it make whether the man had left or stayed?

Feng Wanting stopped thinking about it. His phone rang.

He casually answered. A second later, Wei Ziyun's furious voice blasted out: "Feng! Wan! Ting! Are you fucking dead?"

"Sorry to disappoint you." Feng Wanting calmly held the phone farther away. "Still alive."

"Then why the hell did you only answer now?!" Wei Ziyun roared. "Do you know your dad practically blew up my phone last night? He sent people to search my place before he finally believed I wasn't hiding you! Dude, what did you do?"

"Missed a meeting," Feng Wanting said lightly. "Nothing important."

"You even dared to skip a board meeting? What the hell were you doing last night?!"

Feng Wanting wasn't particularly inclined to share the details of his one-night stand. He was about to make up an excuse when his eyes fell on the banknotes again.

Then he blurted out, "Having sex."

"...?" The other end went silent for at least ten seconds. "What?! What the fuck! What did you say?!" Feng Wanting, seriously? You're not joking? You... aren't you unable to get it up? How... how did you do it? Did you go behind your buddy's back and bottom?"

"Fuck off." Feng Wanting hung up.

Less than a second later, Wei Ziyun called again.

Feng Wanting deliberately let him wait a while before answering.

"I was wrong, I was wrong, young master Feng! My dear brother Feng! Just pretend I was talking out of my ass, okay? You just have no sex drive, not erectile dysfunction." Wei Ziyun rambled on, his tone full of hunger for details and utterly devoid of remorse. "What gorgeous woman was charming enough to cure your years-long affliction?"

"It wasn't a woman," Feng Wanting said. "It was a man."

"A-a man?!" Wei Ziyun was horrified. "You slept with a man? Since when are you gay? Fuck, you're going to scare me to death, Feng Wanting!"

Feng Wanting rubbed the stack of red bills and gave a quiet "Mm."

"So you never had a low sex drive. You just had your sexuality wrong and weren't attracted to girls?"

"No." Feng Wanting thought for a moment. "I'm not attracted to the boys you bring around, either."

Wei Ziyun was gay, completely gay. Male models and minor celebrities were constantly at his side, and every boy who caught his eye was exceptionally good-looking. Feng Wanting had met them several times and never felt any sexual desire for them.

Only last night.

Even Feng Wanting found it unbelievable when he thought back on it.

He had never been able to shake the shadow of "that scene" he'd witnessed at eighteen. All these years, he'd taken it for granted that he couldn't function that way, yet last night, he'd done it so naturally.

Had his condition happened to resolve itself last night, or had that beautiful man helped him overcome his psychological barrier?

Wei Ziyun was still shouting into the phone, but Feng Wanting didn't catch a single word. His mind was filled with the man's slender waist and long legs.

He rubbed between his brows in irritation and interrupted Wei Ziyun. "Wei Ziyun."

Wei Ziyun let out an "Huh?" before asking, "Have you listened to anything I've said?"

"He ran off." Feng Wanting spoke as though to himself, emotion surging like a tide beneath his quiet voice. "He left eight hundred yuan in cash. Does that mean something?"

Feng Wanting wondered whether the eight hundred might be a hint. Eight o'clock, for instance, or the eighth intersection, or room eight.

As he pondered it, Wei Ziyun burst out laughing, so outrageously that Feng Wanting wanted to climb through the phone and kill him.

"What are you laughing at?"

"...Fuck, I'm actually crying, hahahahaha! This is killing me. Young master Feng, you're so adorably innocent I can't take it."

Feng Wanting tightened his grip on his phone. "What exactly does it mean?"

"He fucking took you for a duck-a male escort-"

"You know what a duck is? Quack, quack, quack. A guy who sells sex."

"I give you money, you let me fuck you, and afterward we say goodbye. Once we're out the hotel door, you don't know me and I don't know you. Get it?"

Feng Wanting: "..."

He wanted to kill someone.

At work, Pei Yang felt a chill run down his spine and rubbed his arms uneasily.

With the end of the workday approaching, his coworkers relaxed a little. Someone carried a cup of coffee over to the window for a breather, looked down, and exclaimed, "Holy shit..."

A coworker whose attention wasn't on work casually asked, "What is it? A hot guy downstairs?"

"Not just a hot guy... a rich hot guy..."

At that, a crowd rose from their desks and gathered around the window.

The chatter grew louder, and before long, more than half the office had left their desks.

Yin Sufang and Pei Yang continued working without a change in expression, as though insulated from all the noise.

Yin Sufang glanced approvingly at Pei Yang, who sat across from him, the corners of his mouth lifting.

Sure enough, a worthy rival wouldn't be like those shallow people, so easily distracted by anything unrelated to work.

"Oh my god, isn't that the latest Porsche? It costs over two million! That hot guy just drove it here and parked right outside our company?!"

Someone in the crowd called this out. Pei Yang heard it, and his lashes fluttered. Remembering the Porsche he'd been unable to catch last night, he felt as though a huge rock had slammed into his chest. His right hand slowly stopped moving the mouse, and he instinctively raised his head.