Sitting in the study at Pei Song'an's home, Li Shu speared a bright red strawberry with his fork and stuffed it into his mouth, not daring to lift his eyes.
There was no other reason.
It was simply because Pei Song'an was sitting across from him right now, holding the CET-4 past paper he had found time to complete last night.
Perhaps someone as gifted as Pei Song'an had never experienced getting every single cloze question wrong in his entire life...
"Did you guess on the cloze section?"
Li Shu looked insulted, so indignant he couldn't even get his strawberry down. "I stayed up late working through these questions one by one! You can look down on my abilities, but you can't insult my character!"
Pei Song'an understood. "True. If you'd guessed, you would have gotten at least one out of twenty right."
Li Shu deflated.
He had no idea how good the body's original owner had been at English, but Li Xiaoshu himself had genuinely needed one-on-one tutoring in the month before the college entrance exam just to keep his English score from dragging him down.
He had spent his entire first semester of college having fun. His parents should have counted their blessings if he still remembered all twenty-six letters of the alphabet.
Dressed in loungewear, Pei Song'an looked much more approachable. The study curtains were drawn all the way open, and bright sunlight streamed in, easing Li Shu's current embarrassment.
"If you're having second thoughts, you don't have to waste your time tutoring me. I saw people online saying that someone with grades as bad as mine could sign up for an online course and start from scratch."
Seeing that Li Shu had stopped eating the strawberries in front of him, Pei Song'an took the fruit platter away, checked that there were no droplets of water on the desk, then spread the paper out on it.
"Online courses can't give you systematic practice tailored to your weaknesses. I can tell your grounding in grammar is decent, but your vocabulary is lacking, and you're especially fond of making up words in your essays."
The lecture left Li Shu dazed. He felt as though Pei Song'an had turned into his high school homeroom teacher, and a solemn respect came over him.
"Okay, okay, okay. You're in charge. I'll do whatever you say."
Pei Song'an looked up at him.
Li Shu was fair-skinned to begin with, and his black hair gleamed gold in the sunlight. Perhaps because he had just eaten strawberries, the fruity scent on him was particularly strong.
His gaze slid from Li Shu's brows to his eyes, brushed over his long lashes, settled on his high nose bridge, then finally reached his moist, cool lips.
Pei Song'an let his gaze roam over Li Shu's face without a shred of guilt, as though collecting a payment that could never see the light of day.
The first half of the lesson focused on vocabulary and grammar, while the second half consisted of basic exercises and memorizing words.
Li Shu had eaten breakfast before coming over, then polished off more than half a platter of strawberries. His head was foggy, as though a whole crowd of Zhaocais were fighting inside it.
Willpower alone kept his eyelids up. Fortunately, Pei Song'an eventually took a phone call.
The moment the study door closed, Li Shu drew a deep breath and struggled to lift his eyelids to peer at the a, b, c, and d on the paper.
Honestly, Pei Song'an explained things very well, but that didn't stop him from falling asleep on the spot.
Once someone got sleepy, their thoughts started wandering.
I wonder who's calling Pei Song'an.
Did he understand what I was hinting at in the car? How am I supposed to make him understand that the people who ganged up on Shen Muwen today will target him next time...
Pei Song'an did occasionally display an inhuman desire for control, and he haunted him like a ghost, but it didn't seem all that annoying. After all, when he had sat beside the teacher's podium in high school, his homeroom teacher had watched him much more strictly.
As his thoughts wandered, the scene before his eyes began to tip over.
His eyelids shut, his vision went black, and his head knocked against the desk.
Bang-
"Mm!"
What happened?
Surely I didn't just do something toe-curlingly embarrassing???
Li Shu hurriedly clutched his forehead and cleared his throat. The moment he looked up to sneak a glance at the doorway, his eyes met Pei Song'an's. Who knew how long he had been standing there?
"..."
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
*!*
Aaaaaah, Mom, Mom, save me, save me.
Pei Song'an didn't mock him, though. With the suggestion of a smile, he asked, "May I ask what happened to your self-control...?"
Li Shu closed his eyes in resignation and slumped over the desk, playing dead. "My self-control is so bad that even if you sent me to prison to study, I'd start picking at the wall paint for fun halfway through."
Pei Song'an sat beside Li Shu and took the practice paper. Apart from the scribbles Li Shu had left while half-conscious, he had actually done fairly well on the other questions.
"Better than I expected."
Li Shu sat straight up. "Then can I play on my phone for a while?"
"You should review what you learned today first. Memorize the words up to the underlined section. I'll give you a dictation test in half an hour."
Ever since he was little, nothing had grated on Li Shu more than the words "dictation test." He kicked his legs in protest:
"There's no such thing as dictation in the adult world!"
His little face, defending his freedom, met Pei Song'an's deep, still eyes. The tangled emotions in the man's gaze made Li Shu's heart skip. He swallowed instinctively, and for some reason, even the skin at the back of his neck tingled.
Pei Song'an wasn't angry, nor did he scold Li Shu for being unreasonable. Instead, he swept a restrained gaze over Li Shu from head to toe, then said something completely unrelated:
"Your pants are dirty."
Li Shu looked down. "This morning, Zhaocai tried to pee on me. He scared me so badly I fell on my butt. Must've gotten them dirty then."
Then he suddenly realized something was wrong. "Hey, hey, hey! Since when does the Crown Prince of Hong Kong City change the subject?"
"Change your pants, then you can play on your phone."
"Really?"
The veins stood out on Pei Song'an's hand as he held Li Shu's paper. He set it aside, then extended his hand and slowly tapped the tip of his index finger against the desk, producing a slightly dull sound.
"Really." The man's pupils were pitch-black.
Li Shu held out his hand, palm up. "Then lend me a pair of pants. I'll change in the bathroom."
Pei Song'an's tone didn't change. "Change right here."
"???" Li Shu abruptly stood up, the chair beneath him scraping shrilly against the floor. "Did you say that wrong, or did I hear you wrong?"
Pei Song'an had already moved naturally on to the next step. He lowered his eyes to the smooth desktop, his voice steady and low:
"Come sit here."
Li Shu kept backing away. "No. What kind of logic is this? I don't want to study, so you're making me take my pants off???"
Pei Song'an explained, "I can grant your wish and end today's lesson here. By the same reasoning, you should grant my wish too. It's not an exchange of benefits, just simple give-and-take."
"Your wish is to watch me take my pants off?"
"I said we needed contact to get to know each other better. If I let my guard down completely and cooperate with you, wouldn't that make things much easier for you too?"
Sunlight and air lay between them, heat traveling through the space. As Pei Song'an drew closer step by step, Li Shu felt he could even sense the other's faint breathing.
The shrinking distance immediately set Li Shu's internal alarm system to work.
It was hard not to look at Pei Song'an's deeply defined collarbones and the pectorals faintly visible beneath the fabric. With that sharply chiseled face, he was practically walking testosterone.
The hard, cold chair pressed painfully into his lower back. If he lifted his shirt, there would definitely be red marks.
Pei Song'an watched Li Shu intently, his gaze greedy and sickly. His burning fingers clamped around Li Shu's hip bone, his thumb tucking into the smooth line of muscle at the root of his thigh. The fragrance permeating Li Shu's skin kept burrowing straight into his heart.
The man's fingers trembled for an instant when they touched Li Shu.
The strange feeling that Li Shu might turn and leave at any moment swept through him again. At this point, the track he had custom-built for Li Shu seemed to show signs of cracking apart.
"You helped Shen Muwen today. It made me feel insecure. I'm not happy."
"You need to be punished."
-You can't run away.
Before you continue