20: They’re Just Thirsty for You
Shen Jin hauled down his own quilt, soaked through and dripping, and had Qian Kun put it on a chair. Luckily, the mattress wasn’t wet. At least he could still sleep.
Shen Jin himself had only just moved into the dorm not long ago, and he hadn’t brought a spare quilt either. All he had was a fluffy blanket.
He took it out of the cabinet. Qian Kun didn’t know what he was thinking about, spaced out and staring into nowhere.
“Take it.” Shen Jin handed it over. “Don’t turn on the AC tonight. It’s not hot at night anyway. Use the blanket.”
Qian Kun glanced at the familiar-looking pink chubby bunny pattern on the blanket. His eyes cooled.
He didn’t react.
Shen Jin thought the young master disease was acting up, that he didn’t like using something someone else had used.
Seriously, you’re so spoiled. Use it or don’t.
Shen Jin was about to pull his hand back when Qian Kun took the blanket.
Qian Kun rubbed his fingertips, pressing down the rising restlessness bit by bit. His tone didn’t change. “I was thinking. Pink again?”
“Who says I can’t use pink?”
“It’s not that. It looks pretty.”
“...Mm.”
Once Qian Kun’s attitude improved, Shen Jin found it hard to keep snapping back.
He wasn’t even the type to argue in the first place. It was just that someone’s mouth was rotten to the core.
This blanket was something he’d bought during a supermarket promotion.
He’d already planned to live on campus, and it happened to be on sale. The white one was sold out, so he grabbed the last pink one.
After they took turns washing up, Qian Kun told Shen Jin to get into bed first. He’d turn off the light.
Shen Jin didn’t bother fighting over something that trivial. In some details, Qian Kun really was very gentlemanly.
They both climbed onto their beds.
Qian Kun shoved the pink bunny to the side and lay down fully clothed.
Once the light was out, the room went pitch-black.
He looked across at the person still staring at his phone. The light from the phone lit Shen Jin’s face in a way that felt slightly unreal.
Shen Jin only remembered the matching office text after getting into bed. He pulled out his phone to check it, thinking it would be the usual “we care about you” message.
Huh?
The text showed that five Alphas had responded.
Since he hadn’t been able to match at first, after Shen Jin agreed, the matching office had disclosed his pheromone level. That was what drew so many Alphas in.
Conquering an Omega with a high pheromone level could satisfy a lot of Alphas’ sexual fantasies.
He was so shocked he sat straight up in bed.
Qian Kun opened his eyes, staring at him in the dark. “What is it?”
His voice was too steady, like a moonlit nocturne flowing through the night. The short syllables drifted in the air.
Shen Jin forced himself calm. “...Nothing.”
He exhaled slowly. The matching office texts were from a special number. So you couldn’t reply. You could only receive them.
He planned to call tomorrow and ask for details. If he could avoid the knife, who would choose to suffer on an operating table?
Even with five candidates all at once, Shen Jin didn’t let it go to his head. For his first marking, he wanted to be more cautious.
Qian Kun watched Shen Jin put the phone down and turn over to sleep.
He stared at the small lump of Shen Jin under the blanket for a while, then turned over too, back facing him.
However, no matter how he shifted, he still couldn’t fall asleep.
The dorm bedboards were too hard, and the bed was too narrow. The design was completely unreasonable. After one night, he’d already felt his bones aching. Yet Shen Jin could adapt to this?
As he moved, a faint scent brushed his nose, like dew-wet roses. It was from the blanket, and it smelled very similar to Shen Jin.
Qian Kun switched off the alarm device on his chest. A red light blinked through his shirt, glaringly obvious in the darkness.
When he heard Shen Jin’s breathing gradually steady, he got out of bed silently.
He opened the door, went to the window in the corridor, and lit a suppressant cigarette.
He looked at the half-moon, mostly covered by clouds. Smoke curled up, wrapping him in a hazy veil.
Little by little, he pressed down the pheromones that were getting harder and harder to control.
After a long time…
He took out his phone.
Now, with all the noise and bustle he wore in front of others stripped away, he stared silently at a number sitting in his blacklist.
*
In the morning, when Shen Jin woke up, he didn’t look at his roommate, who was sleeping quietly. He vaguely remembered that the other person had gone out for a while last night. When he came back, he carried a faint smell of smoke.
Even if you shared a room, everyone still had their own private matters. So there was no need to ask.
Shen Jin reread the text. To be safe, he decided he should go in person.
He arrived at eight o’clock sharp, right when the matching office opened.
It was the same receptionist as last time. She showed him the information for those five people.
There wasn’t much. Due to confidentiality regulations, names and jobs were hidden. The only things visible were age, compatibility percentage, pheromone level, and other basic data.
“For you, anything below 90% won’t have great results. These four can only be backups, but there’s one who just crossed 90%. Their pheromone level is close to S-rank. They’re around your age too, and they don’t mind sharing personal information. They’re studying at a key high school in our city.”
When Shen Jin looked up, the receptionist giggled. “Same school as you, too. You can add each other on WeChat and chat first.”
On the way back, Shen Jin looked at the other person’s WeChat avatar and remembered that there really was a high-pheromone Alpha in third year.
That person was extremely high-profile, always bragging about his level, and there were always different Omegas around him. His reputation at school was terrible.
Back in freshman year, he’d even tried to pursue Shen Jin. Later, Shen Jin had privately taught him a few lessons, made him eat a few losses in the dark, and they’d been at peace since.
After that, the guy had loudly declared that he was “downbad no more” for Shen Jin.
Whether he was “downbad” or not, Shen Jin didn’t know. What Shen Jin did know was that he wasn’t paying that guy a single cent in “appearance fees.”
Thinking about it carefully, it was just a small differentiation. The fainting probability was only 5%, and the mortality rate was even lower, down at 2%.
It was like something suddenly clicked open in Shen Jin’s head. Enlightenment.
Picking a date is worse than doing it today. Why would he need an Alpha? Suppressant shots were fantastic.
He went to a big pharmacy and bought thirty flavors of pheromone suppressants. He even had to fill out a lot of forms to get that many.
He refused to believe he couldn’t keep it pressed down. I can’t handle you? Please.
*
Shen Jin also knew suppressants treated the symptoms, not the root.
If it really came to the point where he couldn’t press it down…
Then he’d do surgery.
Thus, the decision was made.
When Shen Jin got to school, it was right at lunchtime. The cafeteria was packed, almost no empty seats.
Long lines snaked in front of several windows. Nearby, a few girls kept glancing toward the boys at a table in the distance.
“Am I seeing things? Why is the Crown Prince in the cafeteria?”
“You’re behind the times. Last time Qian Kun came, he didn’t really know how to buy food yet. I lent him my meal card. He was super nice, and he even topped it up with two hundred for me as a thank-you. He’s seriously so gentlemanly and classy.”
“I suddenly understand the fangirls. He’s just kind of hard to approach. Usually he only hangs out with that transfer group.”
“Look, another Omega went over.”
Shen Jin looked that way, and sure enough, he saw a cute Omega in a first-year uniform tilt toward Qian Kun like he was about to fall.
It was like Qian Kun had eyes on the back of his head. He turned and caught him. The Omega blushed and apologized. They chatted a few words, and Qian Kun sat back down again, calmly picking up a piece of sweet-and-crispy pork tenderloin. The people beside him kept egging things on.
Shen Jin came out with his tray. Not far away, Zhou You had clearly already noticed him and waved. “Shen Jin, over here!”
The moment Shen Jin appeared in the cafeteria, Zhou You understood why someone had suddenly decided to come here on a whim.
As soon as Shen Jin sat down, the table got even louder.
“Shen Jin, where did you go this morning? Can you go talk to Old Hu for us? Has he gone completely feral? He’s making us do a memorized write-out of ‘The Hard Road to Shu’ this afternoon. If we can’t do it, we have to stay at night and keep going!”
Old Hu was homeroom teacher Hu Shengqiang. Even the transfer students had started calling him that along with Class Nine.
“Fourth period is his class, and then second period in the afternoon is also his. Isn’t that schedule kind of unreasonable?”
“So if we subtract time for eating and basketball, we only have a few dozen minutes to memorize?”
“Wrong. Not memorize. Write it out from memory!”
“I seriously suspect he’s hit menopause!”
“He’s not even thirty. I get it, it’s early menopause!”
“Do you think the Poetry Immortal knows he’s torturing students a thousand years later? If he knew, would he still write things that hard?”
“Grandpa Shen, you have to save your kind, loving classmates from fire and water!”
Shen Jin sat next to Qian Kun. Only that seat was empty.
He picked at the egg in his tomato-and-egg stir-fry, blinked, and said, “The full text of ‘The Hard Road to Shu’ is 294 characters. Compared to ‘The Former Teacher’s Memorial,’ which you said you’d never be able to memorize in this lifetime, that’s 444 characters fewer.”
“Shen Jin, do you have a heart?”
“No.”
Shen Jin was cold and ruthless.
‘The Hard Road to Shu’ didn’t have a lot of characters, but it was awkward to read, and there were plenty of rare ones. Dozens of minutes really was tight.
However, they didn’t look that panicked. They were probably just yelling for the sake of yelling.
Qian Kun laughed, his voice low and pleasant. “Alright. Stop bothering Class Rep while he eats. All of you, back off.”
“Ah—”
“The Hard Road to Shu really is hard!”
That was the transfer students wailing.
With the cafeteria so loud, they didn’t stand out much.
Qian Kun watched Shen Jin pick out egg pieces and asked, “Picky eater?”
Shen Jin immediately redirected his chopsticks, stabbed a piece of tomato, and took a bite. “No.”
He just liked the egg in tomato-and-egg. Was it illegal to save the tomatoes for last? Who did it offend?
After the Chinese talk, the topic drifted back to that Omega from earlier. At an age full of restless youth, the favorite pastime was discussing romance.
“Didn’t that Omega look a bit like some celebrity?”
“Yeah. I also heard his pheromones leaked once, and some Alpha said it was really sweet, like strawberry.”
Liu Qimai snorted. “No matter how sweet, our Kun-ge won’t react.”
The other Alphas only knew Qian Kun from high school and didn’t know his history. Seeing Qian Kun didn’t react, Liu Qimai continued, “Brother Kun used to get bitten by an Omega in heat. After that, he stayed far away from that sex.”
“Huh? But Kun-ge is a Beta.”
“So what? Betas can’t get harassed by Omegas now?”
Since Qian Kun didn’t seem to care, everyone just laughed and joked around.
When he noticed Shen Jin looking though, Qian Kun lazily lifted his eyes. “Now you’re scared? Don’t get too close to Omegas from now on.”
Did he really think those Omegas were that innocent?
They were just thirsty for him.
Then Qian Kun picked up his tray and left.
Shen Jin sat there, stunned.
You got bitten. What does that have to do with me?
And what are you teaching me for?
At noon, Qian Kun went to the basketball court and burned off his energy. He turned on the faucet and splashed water over his face with his eyes closed.
A few Alphas came over. One of them was even leaking pheromones openly, showing off without restraint, enough that Omegas nearby had to detour around them.
“My irresistible charm, seriously, it can’t be stopped!”
“Hahaha. Yang-ge, got another peach blossom lately? This girlfriend lasted over ten days, you’re not dumping her yet?”
“Soon. I got a call from the public safety matching office a couple days ago. Guess what? There’s a top-tier Omega looking for a matched Alpha!”
“Pretty?”
“How the hell would I know? Those agencies are boring as hell. Everything’s confidential. No face pics, and it’s like there’s a hole in the middle. You finish the marking and you leave. Who wants to go suffer that kind of humiliation? But this one’s different. The level is too high. If it wasn’t for differentiation, how would it ever be my turn?”
“If you can conquer him, Yang-ge’s resume is gonna get another upgrade!”
“Hahaha. That’s what I thought too. I already agreed to match. Just wait, he’ll definitely contact me!”
“Not seeing the face is such a waste. When the time comes, figure something out. Force him to show his face!”
“Just imagining an Omega with a level that high, getting tortured by differentiation, in so much pain… how slutty that’d be—”
Their voices faded as they walked away.
Qian Kun had already shut the water off.
In the sunlight, water droplets clung to his face, gleaming like crystal.
His eyes were bone-deep cold.
He took out his phone and pulled a certain number out of the blacklist.
He set the phone down beside the sink and removed the heavy wrist guards that suppressed his explosive strength.
He stared at their backs.
“Stop.”
Author’s Note:
They’re just thirsty for you.
Oh? And you’re not?
0 Comments