Chapter 50 Chapter 50: To Be Admired from Afar, Not Profaned (1)
“So you knew all along.”
Xu Yecheng’s voice began to tremble.
He Xiaohan suddenly fell silent.
The tip of Xu Yecheng’s nose started to sting, and the sense of grievance in his heart surged up at once.
“Interesting, isn’t it?”
Xu Yecheng gave a short laugh, yet tears spilled from his eyes. He instinctively turned his head away, but He Xiaohan could still see the tears sliding down his face.
“You joked around like that in front of her. I thought all your showing off was unintentional—turns out it was all meant for me to see.”
He Xiaohan took a deep breath, his expression turning somewhat troubled.
“Watching me make a fool of myself is fun, right?” Xu Yecheng’s voice carried a sob. “Yeah, compared to you, I’m nothing. You get to watch me embarrass myself while being kept in the dark and use it for entertainment, while I can’t do a damn thing to you. And then you can come over like this, lay everything out, and watch me fall apart in misery. That’s pretty interesting, isn’t it?”
“If that’s how you want to think about it, then I really don’t have much to say,” He Xiaohan replied calmly.
“Then how else am I supposed to think about it?” Xu Yecheng’s voice was completely distorted now—hoarse, broken, his words coming out in fragments. “Should I still expect you to comfort me?”
“Stop fucking mocking me, will you?” Xu Yecheng said in a low voice. “You’ve already watched me make a joke of myself for so long, and now you turn around and try to comfort me?”
He Xiaohan watched him wipe away his tears, a complicated look flashing through his eyes.
“The thing I tried so desperately to get is like a disposable consumer good in your hands. You even flaunted it in front of me. After seeing me end up in such a sorry state over it, you still come over to ridicule me.”
“What am I to you if not a joke?”
He Xiaohan took a deep breath.
“I think you should calm down a bit…”
“I admit I’m not calm,” Xu Yecheng said hoarsely. “So what? You’ll never understand how painful this feels. In your eyes, I’m just a kid crying over spilled milk—pathetic and laughable, right?”
“But that glass of milk was almost everything I had.”
“He Xiaohan, I even treated you as a friend.”
He Xiaohan froze in place, watching Xu Yecheng turn and slowly walk away. He could only sigh inwardly.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come.
Frowning, He Xiaohan turned and headed toward the exit of the track field.
Xu Yecheng bit his lower lip and carefully walked to the farthest corner of the field. There were still other students running; he didn’t want anyone else to see him in such a wretched state.
So everything really had just been his own wishful thinking.
That previous sense of fulfillment had merely been a shallow kind of self-satisfaction.
Xu Yecheng suddenly felt utterly ridiculous.
Unwillingness, loss, anger, grievance—all surged together in his chest. A warm, damp feeling spread across his cheeks, and Xu Yecheng hurriedly wiped away the tears on his face.
So spineless. So useless.
He didn’t want to go back to the dorm.
He truly hadn’t expected that this person would have such a nasty sense of amusement.
Yet, incongruously, when he lifted his head, the night sky above was pitch-black, without a single star.
The next second, a cold sensation hit his face—one drop, two drops, and then it began to pour down in torrents.
Zheng Wenxuan turned his head to glance at He Xiaohan standing on the balcony. Listening to the patter of rain, his gaze then swept over Xu Yecheng’s seat.
“Damn, it’s raining this hard. When Baby Cheng went out earlier, it looked like he didn’t bring an umbrella, right?”
“He didn’t,” He Xiaohan replied. “Xuan, why don’t you go pick him up?”
Zheng Wenxuan frowned. “I know this sounds heartless, but I still want to ask—why isn’t it you going?”
He Xiaohan shrugged helplessly. “You’re the one who calls him ‘baby,’ aren’t you?”
Yeah right—some heartfelt umbrella-in-the-rain scene.
Thinking that, Zheng Wenxuan still climbed down from the bed, grabbed an umbrella, and sent Xu Yecheng a message on WeChat.
“Do you have an umbrella? Want me to come pick you up?”
Just as Zheng Wenxuan hit send, the door opened. Xu Yecheng, completely soaked, walked in from outside and closed the door behind him.
When Liu Xianlin turned around and saw Xu Yecheng, he froze.
“Damn, that’s kind of cool, actually,” he joked.
“Cool my ass,” Xu Yecheng said, running a hand through his hair and snapping back. “If it’s so cool, why don’t you go out and get soaked yourself?”
Liu Xianlin chuckled and didn’t say anything more.
Zheng Wenxuan looked puzzled.
“Why didn’t you tell us to go get you?”
Xu Yecheng glanced at him and said flatly, “It started raining when I was about five hundred meters short of finishing my run. I figured I might as well finish it, so I ended up like this.”
Hearing that, Zheng Wenxuan immediately showed some sympathy.
If you don’t hit the distance, it’s basically a wasted run. Zheng Wenxuan had experienced that before too—running through the rain just to reach the required distance before heading back.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Xu Yecheng said. He pulled open the wardrobe, took out some clean clothes, set his phone on the desk, opened a drawer to put the keys inside, and his gaze paused on the mask. A wave of emotion surged up again in his heart.
Maybe that guy never imagined that the girl he was planning to make a move on would turn out to be him.
Xu Yecheng’s thoughts suddenly cleared.
He even felt a hint of smugness.
He wanted to see exactly how that guy would end up, facing a girl who had absolutely no interest in men.
With that thought, Xu Yecheng picked up his clothes and walked into the bathroom.
As he took off his clothes, he looked at himself in the mirror, a familiar sense of frustration rising again.
Yet somehow, his face looked a bit strange—different somehow.
Xu Yecheng blinked and focused on his forehead, realizing that the acne marks that had lingered on his face for so long had almost faded to the point of being invisible.
He thought about it carefully—he hadn’t even been using skincare products lately, yet his skin had actually gotten better.
A chill suddenly rose up from below. Xu Yecheng hung up his clothes and turned on the tap. Warm water flowed over his body, and his body and mind relaxed along with it.
Only during the shower, when his fingertips brushed against the skin on his chest, there was still a faint, dull pain.
Still not healed… it’s been days already.
Xu Yecheng thought helplessly. Maybe he should go to the hospital to get it checked sometime.
But the moment he thought about the cost, his mood immediately soured.
He put on his pajamas. After the shower, the overall comfort did lift his mood a little.
He walked over and lay down on the bed, then saw a message from Doudou.
——— “Been waiting, everyone~”
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