Chapter 56: He Even Licked Chen Jingshen’s Lips
Yu Fan needed a few steps before his hands and feet listened to him again.
He never talked much during the guys’ chatter, but everyone subconsciously treated him as the anchor of the group. So the second he stood up, heads lifted in unison.
“Where you going?” Wang Lu’an asked.
Yu Fan paused, face unreadable. “Smoke.”
“Oh? I’ll come…” Zuo Kuan started to rise.
Yu Fan pressed him back down with one hand and drawled, “I’m smoking alone. Don’t follow.”
“Didn’t he say he was quitting? Caved this fast?” Zuo Kuan stared at Yu Fan’s cool swagger that was just a bit stiff. “And won’t let us tag along. He worried I’ll mooch his cigs?”
“Bullsh**, Yu Fan isn’t that stingy,” Wang Lu’an said.
“Relax, I’m kidding.” Zuo Kuan glanced around, clicked his tongue. “He’s only going for a smoke. Why are so many girls staring?”
Wang Lu’an had spent enough time with Yu Fan to be used to it. The face, plus that colder, meaner edge no one else had, meant the return rate on stares was high whether on campus or off.
It was not about crushes, just a magnetic pull that made people look.
Normally they only dared sneak peeks. In the pitch dark, who wouldn’t dare look straight.
He bumped Zuo Kuan’s shoulder and was about to rope him into a mobile game when another tall figure stood and headed out.
“So where you going, study god?” Wang Lu’an called.
“Toilet,” Chen Jingshen said.
More heads turned to track him. After a moment, Zuo Kuan tugged his gaze back and asked, “If I get up and leave now, think that many people will watch me too?”
Wang Lu’an pointed to the big movie screen in front. “See that curtain?”
“I’m not blind.”
“If you run straight into it, maybe you’ll get that many eyes.”
“F*** you.”
The lab building usually kept a few lights on each floor at night. Tonight, since everyone had gone down to watch the movie, only a single bulb burned in the stairwell. So the place was mainly black, steeped in a sickly yellow, a touch eerie.
Arms crossed, Yu Fan leaned against a pillar without a flicker of emotion. He checked the time for the sixth time. Two minutes until Chen Jingshen was due.
He switched to a different pillar and kept waiting, letting that slow, steady surge of excitement spread through him in the dark.
The first time he saw other couples slipping off, he had wavered for a second.
Only a second. He pressed it down again. School was risky. It felt like there were eyes in every corner. Even a deserted lab classroom had curtains that never quite closed, or some kid sneaking in to grab a delivery.
But Chen Jingshen had asked him out.
That counted as asking him out… right?
Either way, he still came.
He was about to check the time a seventh time when a tall, lean silhouette crossed the field toward him. The night was so dark he could not see clothes or face, but he knew in an instant it was Chen Jingshen.
As soon as the other boy reached him, Yu Fan grumbled, “Didn’t I tell you to act natural?”
“What wasn’t natural?” Chen asked.
“You walk faster than usual. Your arms were swinging higher too.”
Chen went quiet a few seconds, then nodded. “First time doing this. No experience. I’ll pay attention.”
“…”
Noise rolled over from the field again. Chen brushed his fingers against Yu Fan’s. “Where are we going?”
Yu Fan was about to say, How the hell should I know, when Chen said, “Back then, where did you take your girlfriends on campus. Can I go there?”
Yu Fan wanted to time-travel and clamp a hand over his own mouth.
Bragging thrown is like water spilled. He forced calm, pushed off the pillar, and stood straight. “Where else. Any old classroom.”
He had been observing. Every couple that flinched when they saw him was heading to the upper floors.
They stepped inside. In reality only the classroom at the end of the first floor was usually safe, no camera there.
But the lights were off tonight, and the school’s ancient cameras did not have infrared. The whole building had turned into a sanctuary.
The first floor’s prime location was, predictably, occupied.
They climbed to the second floor. Yu Fan tried every door. All locked.
On the third, they did not even need to try. A couple stood by the corridor window, fingers laced, heads bent. In the first room someone was clearly talking.
Zhu Xu: “I fell at practice today and you didn’t come comfort me. Boo hoo, you don’t love your Xu-baobao at all…”
Yu Fan: “…”
What the hell, do you need to queue for kissing now.
He took a long breath and tugged Chen onward, his steps just a shade quicker.
Chen glanced at his own shirt being tugged but followed without a word.
Zuo Kuan had not been wrong. Nearly all five floors were occupied.
Yu Fan had never done the full tour of the lab building. By the time they reached the last classroom on the fifth floor, he had given up hope. The door creaked open and the empty room felt like catching the last bus past midnight.
Hunting room by room and keeping their steps light while dodging people had tired him more than a three-thousand-meter run.
Chen shut the door, checked the windows and curtains. When he turned around, Yu Fan was already on the first-row desk, shoulder to the wall, letting the fan hit him while he played on his phone.
His phone had been vibrating the whole climb, Wang Lu’an sending voice notes. Yu Fan tapped one open at random.
“Yu Fan, how many packs are you smoking? You coming back or what?” Wang Lu’an’s voice boomed through the empty room.
“Are the lab classrooms always this busy?” Chen asked.
Afraid Wang would call outright, Yu Fan fired off a couple of curt replies, then said offhand, “Who knows…”
He stopped, then remembered himself and mumbled a correction. “I’ve never dated at our school anyway.”
“Mhm,” Chen said.
Wang Lu’an was too chatty. Yu Fan humored him for a bit, then remembered something. He kept typing as he called, “Chen Jingshen.”
“Mm.”
“What did the physics teacher want with you?”
“Nothing much. The training camp.”
Yu Fan thought of the boy who had invited Chen to share a dorm and paused his typing. After a few seconds he said, “Oh. When are you going?”
“Not going.”
Yu Fan blinked and looked up, only to find Chen already standing in front of him, eyes lowered.
“Why?”
Chen had planned to tease him but decided not to waste time. He said it straight. “I wasn’t planning to go. Group events caused trouble before, so I stopped.”
“What trouble?”
Chen considered, then said lightly, “Got bullied.”
“?”
Yu Fan shot upright. His face went cold in an instant. “When. Where. Who. How did they bully you. Did you hit them back?”
Chen almost laughed and held it. “At a summer camp when I was little. I didn’t hit back. Someone stood up for me.”
Yu Fan’s expression twisted with the telling. He bristled at “didn’t hit back,” then his shoulders gradually dropped at the end.
“How were you that useless as a kid that someone else had to fight your battles,” he said coolly.
“Guess so.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“If I keep going the movie will be over,” Chen said, tapping his fingers against Yu Fan’s. He offered a truce. “Can you postpone the scolding.”
Maybe it was the way he lowered his voice, but Yu Fan’s hands around the phone tightened for a second. He remembered why they were here.
Five floors’ worth of patience trickled back all at once. The windows were closed; the movie’s noise had gone faint.
Yu Fan muted Wang and Zuo Kuan and tossed his phone aside. Only then did he lift his eyes and answer, frosty as ever, “Fine.”
The room settled into a brief, heavy quiet.
Chen’s eyes glinted a little in the dark. Yu Fan lasted a few seconds before it was too much and he started to look away.
“I looked it up,” Chen said suddenly. “Those quit-smoking lollipops are useless.”
“…”
Why the hell bring up candy now.
Yu Fan’s mouth twitched down. He had not managed a comeback before Chen continued, “They say you need gum or some other distraction.”
Chen lowered his eyes. “Do you want a smoke now?”
Yu Fan’s fingers tightened on the desk. His Adam’s apple shifted. After a while he said, “A little, I guess.”
Chen hummed and leaned in.
Yu Fan’s heart pounded but his face stayed steady as he lifted his chin. He had just brushed Chen’s lip when a flashlight swept across the frosted pane at the top of the door and vanished.
They both went rigid.
Then Zuo Kuan’s foghorn of a voice carried crisp and clear from downstairs.
“Zhu X— Brothers and sisters of the lab building, run your a**es! Director Hu is fishing for sinners tonight! He is storming upstairs! Ow ow ow, Director, I was wrong, don’t twist my ear…”
Chaos followed.
The spooky, haunted lab building suddenly spawned people like a kicked anthill. Some ran the stairs, some the fire escape. Anyone who ran into security doubled back at speed.
Yu Fan was still a little dazed when he and Chen vaulted out a first-floor window. What kind of cursed loop was this. Hadn’t he just jumped out the same way with Chen this morning?
They were experienced and quick. Even from the fifth floor, they were among the first outside.
The building was noisy as a festival. A few seconds after they landed, another window clattered. Zhu Xu and his girlfriend tumbled out in triumph.
“You okay, babe? Did you knock your leg? I’ll carry you. I’ll carry you! I’ll put you down once we reach the field,” Zhu Xu said, then noticed two silhouettes behind him.
He blinked. “Yu Fan, what are you doing here. Smoking?”
Yu Fan had flinched when Zhu Xu spotted him, a dozen murder-and-disposal plans skittering through his head. The question snapped him back.
Right. Why were he and Chen running?
They were both guys. Even if they walked downstairs right under Director Hu’s nose, so what?
Chen seemed to realize it too. His shoulders loosened and his face reset to the usual blank.
“Yeah,” Yu Fan said lazily.
“Okay, smoke up. We’ll head back,” Zhu Xu said. “Movie’s about done anyway.”
Everyone else was on the field. The back path behind the academic building was empty except for them.
Zhu Xu carried his girlfriend, walking slow. The two were practically glued together. He would turn his head to murmur something and she would bashfully thump his back.
Forced to watch from behind, Yu Fan felt his mood sour by the step. Getting ambushed by Fat Tiger twice in one day was one thing. Same romance, same patrols. Why was the gap so huge.
Other people elope down the path, flirting and teasing. He and Chen took a quiet night stroll.
They got a full-length kiss in the lab. He and Chen climbed five flights instead.
What the F***.
“Chen Jingshen.”
Chen turned toward the sound, only to be yanked by the collar. He dipped his head on instinct and Yu Fan’s mouth landed on his.
There was no streetlight on the path. Only two yellow lamps on the lab wall tossed thin shadows of leaves across the ground.
For a breath their shadows fit together.
Yu Fan pulled back quickly, let go of Chen’s shirt, and looked ahead like nothing had happened. In his head he noted that this time he had not kissed like a stunned idiot. He had even licked Chen Jingshen’s lip. He was amazing.
Then his arm was seized. Before he could react he was hauled into the open door of the nearby equipment room.
Closer to the field, Zhu Xu set his girlfriend down and glanced back, then blinked.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He scratched his head, puzzled. “Yu Fan and study god… no idea where they went. Thought they were right behind us.”
The movie finally ended. Students lugged chairs back to the teaching building in a majestic flood.
The front stairwell jammed up. Some people looped around to the back stairs.
Some were too lazy to carry. They just dragged the chairs, the scraping shriek needling the ears.
The equipment room sat across a narrow alley from the building and its door was shut tight.
Inside was narrow and cramped, sports gear piled on both sides, leaving only a sliver in the center.
Yu Fan had slid to the floor, back against the wall, a little dizzy from being kissed. He had learned how to breathe when kissing, but every time Chen’s tongue slid in he still went a little floaty.
Voices and scraping from outside came in fits and starts, tugging at his nerves. He resisted and thrilled at the same time. The back of his head hummed.
“Where the hell did Yu Fan and study god go?”
Wang Lu’an’s voice reached them and Yu Fan jerked like he had been shocked. The hands on his jaw slid down, pressed on his throat, and forced him back against the door.
His spine thumped softly against the sheet metal.
“What was that?” Wang asked.
“No clue. Hey, think they did it on purpose? Ran off, made us carry their chairs,” Zuo Kuan grumbled. “Damn, Director Hu twisted my ear so hard. Still aches.”
…
Yu Fan’s head swam. Heat flushed his face. Screw it, he thought, and kissed back, clumsy and reckless.
Which only made Chen kiss him harder.
When they finally broke apart, the noise outside had faded.
Yu Fan sat there catching his breath. Then he reached up, grabbed Chen’s cheeks, and squeezed them together into a fish-face.
He glared up, voice hoarse. “Chen Jingshen, if you had used even half the strength you just used to pin me, there is no way you would have been bullied as a kid.”
Chen let him squish his face, silent for a long moment. Then he rumbled a low “mm” and, unable to help himself, bent to kiss him again.
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