Chapter 18: Is it yummy?
Chapter 18: Is it yummy? Translator: DragonRider
Rong Yi’s alcohol-soaked brain didn’t work very well.
“What is true?”
Chen Keyao did not answer, but turned to look at Zhou Li
Zhou Li slept soundly and didn’t stir at all. If it wasn’t for the warmth of the body that Rong Yi could feel when carrying him all the way upstairs, it could almost be mistaken for a dead body.
Rong Yi followed Chen Keyao’s eyes and stared at the corpse-like Zhou Li for a while, and then looked up: “Why are you staring at him? It’s so rude.”
“I…” Chen Keyao felt a bit embarrassed, moving his stare away, “I just wanted to ask, he…”
Rong Yi did not wait for him to finish, and strode over to him: “Why are you standing here with such a bad posture?”
“Ha?” Leaning against the door frame, Chen Keyao was totally puzzled, but he still straightened himself up under Rong Yi’s stare.
“What are you doing in my room at such a late time?” Rong Yi continued pointing at him, “What are you trying to do?”
Chen Keyao hesitated: “…Isn’t this my home?”
“Oh, yeah.” Rong Yi nodded and returned to his room. After a little while, he suddenly felt that something was wrong, so he turned back, “I paid the rent! I have regional autonomy!”
Chen stared at him for a moment and laughed: “You’ve actually drunk too much, haven’t you?”
Rong Yi shook his head: “No, I haven’t.”
“OK if you say so,” Chen Keyao said, turning around and walking toward the apartment door, “Since you’ve had too much to drink, you should rest early, and be careful, don’t have any accident.”
Rong Yi still thought he had a very sober mind, and immediately detected the contradiction between the two sentences of this guy.
He quickly followed up: “I did drink, but I didn’t drink too much.”
Chen Keyao bowed his head to change his shoes: “Well, well, not much.”
Rong Yi was finally satisfied, and ready to go back to his room, but he turned around when he heard the door opening: “Where are you going?”
“Downstairs, convenience store,” Chen Keyao said. “Don’t lock the door. I’ll be right back.”
Rong Yi thought about it and then also walked to the door and began putting on shoes: “I’ll go with you.”
Chen Keyao looked keen to stop Rong Yi: “Please don’t bother. Just tell me what you need. I can get them for you.”
In the middle of the conversation, Rong Yi had changed his shoes swiftly.
He felt that he was sober-minded, thinking clearly, moving agilely, and had no signs of any drunkenness at all, so he could not understand what Chen Keyao was fussing about.
“I can go myself!” Rong Yi walked out of the door with his head high and chest out. He stopped in front of Chen Keyao, waved a hand and said, “Let’s go!”
He walked up to the elevator, full of mettle, and pressed the button. Chen Keyao followed up quickly. He looked at Rong Yi with a hesitant expression, but eventually they walked into the elevator together in silence.
“Do you think this elevator is a bit wobbly?” Rong Yi stood in the middle of the elevator and asked with a frown.
Chen Keyao looked at him, and his expression was very subtle.”… maybe …a little bit.”
Rong Yi quietly retreated to the back of the elevator and clung to the wall tightly: “Scary.”
Chen Keyao didn’t utter a word, but simply turned his head away quietly, leaving Rong Yi with the back of his head.
Once they were out of the building, a cold wind blew on his scalding skin, and Rong Yi felt thoroughly refreshed, so he immediately began to have a very pleasant mood.
He took the initiative to speak to Chen Keyao: “What are you going to buy in the middle of the night?”
“I’m hungry, I’ll buy something to eat,” Chen Keyao said. “I sleep late, and the meal you make at home is really just lunch for me.”
“Why did you sleep so late?” Rong Yi asked again.
“I’m just used to it,” Chen Keyao said. “That’s how my body clock works.”
Rong Yi looked at him: “Why are you used to it?”
“…”
Chen Keyao ignored him.
“Why are you used to it?” Rong Yi kept on questioning.
“Because…”Chen Keyao looked at him and said, “If you are bathed in the first morning light and go to sleep every day for 300 years, then you will become a fairy.”
Rong Yi couldn’t understand this so he stopped.
Chen Keyao looked back and saw him pondering quietly with his head tilted to one side. He couldn’t help laughing: “Hurry up.”
When the two men entered the convenience store, Chen Keyao went to the freezer to pick some late-night snack food, while Rong Yi was hesitating in front of the candies on the shelves opposite the cashier.
His throat felt a bit dry and uncomfortable, so he wanted to buy some peppermint sweets or chewing gum. But this shelf of boxes now looked a little strange, not exactly the same brand he used to buy.
Chen Keyao came back with a rice wrap when Rong Yi was struggling with a frown.
Rong Yi reached out and dragged him to himself, then pointed his chin at the shelf in front of him.
“Which one do you think is better?”
“…”
“Have you never had them?”
Chen Keyao looked at the shelves, then his face, and then shook his head carefully:”…No.”
What a waste of time.
Rong Yi stopped talking to him, reaching out for a small box to examine it. He then looked up and asked the clerk standing at the counter: “Which one of these tastes better?”
The clerk hesitated: “Although I have never tasted them, I guess none of them tastes nice…Sir, you can try the shelf below, where there are all kinds of flavours.”
After saying this, he glanced at Chen Keyao.
Chen Keyao quickly moved two steps to the side, and then handed over the rice wraps to the cashier only when he was at a fair distance from Rong Yi: “Please heat this up for me. Thanks.”
Rong Yi bent down to check out the goods on the shelf below, and saw the boxes printed with various food patterns. He thought for a moment, picked up a box of strawberry flavour, took a bottle of Coke out of the fridge, and then he handed them to the cashier.
…
Out of the convenience store, the expression on Chen Keyao’s face looked rather ambivalent.
“He’s fast asleep like a log. You’d better not get any ideas.”
“Ah?” Rong Yi didn’t quite understand.
Still puzzled, he unpacked the box of chewing gum he had just bought and handed it to Chen Keyao.
“You want one?”
“…”
Chen Keyao swallowed down some saliva.
Why was this man suddenly so polite? He obviously wanted to have one but didn’t hold out his hand. Rong Yi was a little annoyed, took a small packet out from the box and pushed it into Chen Keyao’s hand holding the shopping bag.
“Here, try it.”
This candy was individually packed and looked very nice.
He sighed silently and then pulled out another one from the box. He tore it open with his teach and squeezed its content into his mouth and started chewing.
Chen Keyao looked at him with horror.
“What are you doing?”
Rong Yi chewed and chewed with a frown, but didn’t say anything.
Alarmed, Chen Keyao looked at him with his mouth open for quite a while before he asked: “… Is it yummy?”
“It’s yucky,” Rong shook his head, “The cashier lied to me.”
“…”
“It tastes strange and it’s greasy,” Rong Yi spat the broken rubber product out into its packet. “It’s kind of disgusting.”
Chen Keyao looked down and saw the small square-shaped packet that had just been forcibly stuffed into his hand.
“You don’t eat it either. Just throw it away.” Rong Yi walked towards a rubbish bin, saying, “It tastes awful.”
Just two steps away, he heard Chen Keyao guffaw behind him.
As soon as he turned back, he saw Chen Keyao squatting on the floor, laughing so hard that he could hardly breathe and tears were coming into his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Rong Yi was confused.
Chen Keyao seemed to be trying to say something, but he really couldn’t stop laughing or even stand up, so he could only wave at him with his eyes closed.
Rong Yi was even more perplexed: “Have you gone mad?”
His response caused another bout of hysterical laughter.
“Stop laughing,” Rong Yi opened up his arms carefully to balance himself, “You’re laughing so hard that even the ground is shaking!”
Chen Keyao, who had just barely stopped laughing for a second, looked up at him, then lowered his head again, and his whole body was shaking with laughter.
What a mystery.
Rong Yi ignored him, carefully moved, just like walking on a narrow single-log bridge, in the direction of the rubbish bin, trying to throw away this horrible gum.
After a long struggle, Rong Yi finally managed to get to the rubbish can. He was just about to throw the chewing gum in when Chen Keyao suddenly pulled his arm from behind.
“Don’t throw it away. What a waste,” He was still laughing when he said. “Keep the rest of the box”.
“It’s really yucky.” Rong Yi told him very seriously.
“Just do me a favour. Keep them for one night.” Chen Keyao’s expression was distorted, “Chuck them out tomorrow, okay?”
“Why?”
“You will know tomorrow.”
After these words, Chen Keyao began to laugh like a mental again, laughing and smacking his hands on the thigh.
Rong Yi stared at him for a while and then threw the box of yucky gum into the bag Chen Keyao was carrying.
“Well, you can have them then.”
Rong Yi found Chen Keyao a bit mentally unstable.
But at a moment when the elevator was swinging like a swing, this mentally unstable guy was his only support.
“Give me a hand,” Rong Yi pleaded for help painfully, clinging to one side of the walls inside the lift. “It’s terrifying.”
Chen Keyao was still laughing as he reached his hand out: “No honestly, why did you buy more alcohol when you’re already as drunk as this?”
“What alcohol?” Rong Yi was all very tense and pulled at his sleeve.
Chen Keyao pointed with his free arm: “That one in your hand!”
Rong Yi raised his arm to have a look, and then wondered.
He remembered that he had drunk most of a big bottle of icy Coke from the convenience store before he went into the elevator. But how come this bottle in his hand right now looked like some kind of fruit wine?
He muttered: “Who had swapped it for me?”
“…” Chen Keyao continued his convulsions.
Rong Yi looked back at him. “Was it you!”
“No.” Chen Keyao shook his head with a laugh.
“You’re the only one here,” Rong Yi looked at him in all seriousness, “It must have been you!”
“…” Chen Keyao wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. “OK, it was me.”
“You…” Rong Yi immediately took a quick step forward, but before he finished his sentence, both his steps and his voice started to float.
After losing the support of the wall, the world started to swirl around again. Rong Yi lost his balance completely, two steps left, two steps right, and finally fell forward amid Chen Keyao’s continuous warning “caution”.
Chen Keyao had reached out to help him, so he was immediately pushed back by Rong Yi, and eventually the two of them smashed together on the wall.
Rong finally found his support after he had crashed into Chen Keyao. Now he was feeling extremely stable and relaxed. This body in front of him was so warm and reliable that he subconsciously reached out and cuddled him.
That half-bottle of fruit wine dropped on the floor and rolled across the elevator.
When it stopped in the corner of the elevator, the door opened.
“…well.” Chen Keyao flustered, “Here we are.”
Rong Yi nodded: “Oh.”
Then he lowered his head and chuckled.
“…What are you doing?” Chen Keyao’s voice was very nervous.
“You, it’s so nice to hold you like this,” Rong Yi rubbed against him twice,” It’s very comfy.”
The elevator door was closed automatically in silence.
Rong Yi felt so totally comfortable and relaxed that he became too sleepy to open his eyes. He shut his eyes in a haze, but just one second before his consciousness slipped away completely, the guy, who had been so stiff and let him cuddle up till now, suddenly pushed him away.
Rong Yi, who had been pushed to lean against another wall inside the elevator, shook his head in a giddy swoon and then found Chen Keyao was frantically pressing the ‘open’ button on the control panel. As soon as the elevator door opened, this guy just dashed out immediately without looking back.
Rong Yi leaned back against the wall and rested for a moment before wobbling out. And then he found this guy standing around the corner of the stairs.
Chen Keyao was bending over with one hand supporting his back, throwing up uncontrollably.
The writer’s notes:
Zhou Li at this moment: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…