Every embarrassing moment in his life involved Xia Qinghe

It had been pretty funny to hear about, but when Xia Qinghe appeared before him with a large box packed with dozens of little pastries and gleefully offered him a taste, Lin Fengmian felt as though those pink peach-blossom pastries were coin-sized laxatives lunging at him.

Five had taken Xia Chengye down. There were at least ten times that many in this box. Wouldn't that take down a humpback whale?

The corner of Lin Fengmian's mouth twitched. Hardening his heart, he pushed the pastry box away. "I don't want diarrhea."

Xia Qinghe said, "..." What a good buddy you are, being that blunt. "My grandpa's diarrhea had nothing to do with my pastries. He said so himself."

Lin Fengmian snorted and turned his face away.

Xia Qinghe stared at the prettiest pastries he had picked out after spending an entire day making them over the weekend, then picked one up and stuffed it into his mouth.

Lin Fengmian sucked in a sharp breath. "You don't have to prove yourself like that."

"I told you, my grandpa's diarrhea had nothing to do with my pastries." Xia Qinghe ate ten in one go, twice as many as Grandpa Xia. He felt perfectly fine. Other than being a little sweet, a little cloying, there was nothing wrong with them.

"Just you wait, I..." Clutching his stomach, Xia Qinghe bolted out of the classroom and charged into the restroom halfway down the corridor.

Lin Fengmian stared, dumbfounded, at Xia Qinghe vanishing at the speed of light. This worked even faster than laxatives.

Xia Qinghe practically lived in the restroom for half the day, until the diarrhea left him weak all over. Lin Fengmian had to carry him on his back to the school infirmary. Xia Qinghe finally found his conscience. "Mianmian, don't eat those pastries."

"Shut up. I can smell the stink."

Xia Qinghe felt utterly wronged at being treated with such disgust, and cried far more sincerely than he had at the hospital yesterday. "Mm-hmm, you think I'm disgusting?"

"Fuck, can you stop picking up this nauseating crap from people in palace dramas?" Lin Fengmian really wanted to dump him on the ground and rub the goosebumps off his arms.

Xia Qinghe was dead weight, and he wouldn't stay still, either, constantly slipping downward. Lin Fengmian bounced him higher on his back and kept walking.

"Mianmian, I need to shit."

"We're in the garden. There's nowhere for you to shit."

"You can't hold diarrhea in."

"Shit your pants, then."

"That wouldn't be good."

"Then hold it."

"I can't. I really can't hold it anymore. Run! There's a toilet in the infirmary."

Then the entire campus heard Xia Qinghe's howling and Lin Fengmian panting like a dog.

Lin Fengmian gripped Xia Qinghe tightly behind the knees, while Xia Qinghe gritted his teeth and worked his anal sphincter for all he was worth. Through their combined efforts, they finally reached the infirmary safely.

Lin Fengmian leaned against the door and wiped away his sweat, listening to the splashing and spluttering inside.

"Fuck, every embarrassing moment in my life involves Xia Qinghe."

The school doctor calmly prepared the IV solution. After working at a school long enough, nothing really came as a surprise anymore. Young people were always acting on whatever popped into their heads, after all, with an endless supply of bizarre tricks.

When Xia Qinghe shuffled out, the school doctor teased him. "Impressive willpower. You made it across the entire garden and the covered walkway without shitting your pants. That deserves praise."

Xia Qinghe's face darkened. He could really do without that kind of praise.

While Xia Qinghe was on his IV, Lin Fengmian helped him to the toilet twice more. Later, the medication took effect, and his face was no longer as deathly pale. Hearing the end-of-school music, Lin Fengmian glanced overhead. There were still two bottles of IV fluid they hadn't even started.

"Want something to eat?"

"A bowl of congee, some eggs or something. I don't want anything else."

"Okay."

Lin Fengmian knew the school had a cafeteria, but he had never been there. In kindergarten, meals had been delivered right to him, and all he had to do was eat.

From elementary school through high school, students had to get their own food from the cafeteria. Lin Fengmian had never gone. Xia Qinghe always got their food and brought it to the classroom, where they ate together.

That was because he needed to catch up on sleep between classes, or he would get sleepy during lessons.

Today was his first trip to the cafeteria. Following the crowd, he arrived and was startled by the densely packed sea of heads before him. "Holy shit, does our school have this many people?"

Mimi and several female classmates waved to him from a distance. "Lin Fengmian, you're here to get food?"

"Yeah. Xia Qinghe's still on an IV in the infirmary. I'm buying him some congee."

Mimi pointed at a counter with hardly anyone in front of it. "They sell congee over there. The plain congee and boiled eggs are both there."

Lin Fengmian crossed mountains of people, crossed seas of people, and traversed the surging school cafeteria before finally reaching the counter in the corner. "Ma'am, two bowls of plain congee and ten-no, twenty boiled eggs."

The cafeteria lady thought she had misheard. "How many eggs?"

"Twenty."

"Can you finish them? The school discourages wasting food." Though the students at Shengjing International School were either rich or influential, the school maintained strict standards, and wasting food was not permitted.

"We can finish them. My buddy has a huge appetite."

The cafeteria lady could only serve him the food. Lin Fengmian took out his phone, scanned the code, and paid.

It was the first time he had used his own meal card since enrolling at Shengjing International School.

It alerted his dad.

"Mianmian, having lunch?"

After buying the congee and eggs, Lin Fengmian had no strength left to battle on, so he simply left the cafeteria carrying the only food he had. "Yeah. Xia Qinghe has diarrhea, so I'm getting the food today."

"All right, then. Nothing's wrong. I just saw the payment notification and thought I'd ask." Lin Qixiu was very afraid his sweet baby might get bullied at school.

That lazy personality of his made it all too easy for people to mistake him for an easy target.

"Oh, go have your lunch too. I'm hanging up."

When Lin Fengmian returned to the infirmary, Xia Qinghe looked as though he had taken a rejuvenation pill, without a trace of his earlier weakness. At the sight of the plain congee and eggs, he asked, "Where's your food?"

"Too many people. Didn't feel like squeezing through."

Lin Fengmian hated exercise more than anything. Carrying Xia Qinghe across half the campus had used up six months' worth of exercise for him. He was exhausted, and before he had rested enough, he had crossed half the campus again to get food. Now he didn't even have the energy to eat.

Seeing how drained he was, Xia Qinghe picked up a spoon and began feeding him. "I never thought our school was big before. It took getting sick to realize it's way too big. We shouldn't donate land or buildings to it. We can't let it expand any further."

Lin Fengmian wholeheartedly agreed. "I'm with you."

Those few words between them kept Shengjing International School's grounds from expanding for another twenty years, until thirty years later, when the homologous gametes experiment succeeded and their twins enrolled.

But that was a story for later.

After this ordeal, Xia Qinghe resolved to study cooking properly. He couldn't let Lin Fengmian get diarrhea. With that body of his that never got any exercise, one bout would leave him needing ten days or half a month to recover. He wasn't as tough as Xia Qinghe.

Xia Qinghe couldn't bear that, so he could only work hard at learning. He didn't eat what he made, either, instead secretly giving it to Xia Weiting and Bai Qingwan to use them as guinea pigs. Only if they ate it without any problems would he taste it himself. Once he was truly sure there was nothing wrong with it, he would give it to Lin Fengmian.

With continued effort, his cooking gradually improved, until now, when he could make all sorts of delicious food.

Xia Qinghe put on gloves, lifted the steamer basket off the pot, and set it on the table. Then he ladled out two bowls of bird's nest congee before entering the bedroom.

The bedroom was still pitch-black. Light squeezed through a gap in the curtains in a single strip, and Lin Fengmian slept soundly, hugging the quilt.

Xia Qinghe walked over and, for some inexplicable reason, didn't wake him right away. He stared at Lin Fengmian for a long time before slowly bending down. Those full, rosy lips were right before his eyes, plump and juicy as they tempted him.

"Arise, you who refuse..."

The blaring ringtone instantly stripped Xia Qinghe of every last romantic thought, sending him scurrying away like flowing water.

A fair hand emerged from beneath the quilt and silenced the phone alarm. Why had it just felt as if a dog had been breathing on his face, all warm?

But Lin Fengmian looked around. Wasn't this Xia Qinghe's house? He didn't have a dog.

So had he imagined it just now?