Chapter 21: 21

Ye Ci’s negative reaction was much bigger than Huo Tinglan had imagined.

When he was discharged from the hospital, he was checked again inside and out, and by all indications, he was basically back to normal. The person himself was still listless, obviously thinking about things.

Huo Tinglan apologized to him, and he had accepted it completely. It didn’t look like he dared to be angry or speak out. But when he wanted to take the opportunity to reconcile with Ye Ci again, he would awkwardly shy away. He often wouldn’t say more than a few words, clumsily using “I’m not feeling well” and “I’m sleepy” as excuses to avoid communicating with Huo Tinglan.

It seemed inoffensive but was, in fact, more difficult to deal with than anger.

In order to not over-stimulate him, Huo Tinglan resisted the urge to ask questions and press. After putting this matter on the backburner for a couple of days, the midterm exam papers were sent by Uncle He.

After getting the school’s exam papers, Ye Ci tried his best to dispel the strange emotions that had been haunting him for the past two days, strictly following the school’s exam time to monitor himself. After finishing the sets of test papers in his bedroom, he asked Uncle He for the answers in order to compare scores.

It was easy to decide how to fill in the blanks, and to follow the steps for the major questions of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, but he was not sure about some subjective questions in Chinese and English, especially regarding composition.

If he scored himself low, he would not be reconciled, and if he judged the score too high, he would be lying to himself.

After hesitating for a while, he finally took the papers and looked for Huo-shushu.

“. . . . Huo-shushu.” Ye Ci knocked on the study door.

“Come in.” Huo Tinglan closed a document and gestured at the paper in Ye Ci’s hand. So as not to make him feel awkward, he took the lead and said, “How did you do on the exam?”

“I per, performed well.” Ye Ci pursed his lips.

Huo Tinglan wore a dazzling white shirt today, with an imperial collar and a platinum tie with one side decorated with small stag antlers. He had an Alpha’s unique power and dignity. With eyes as black and clear as water, he was extraordinarily handsome.

Ye Ci was as nervous as a thief, swiftly averting his eyes and staring at his slippers: “That is, some questions, such as composition, I wasn’t sure how to judge . . . . Can you help take a look at it for me?”

“Okay, bring it to me.” Huo Tinglan reached out to pick it up.

The hand was slender and powerful, strong and lean. The fingers and wrist were angular, with slightly convex blue veins on the back. An expensive mechanical watch clasped that wrist, with sapphire glass and a crocodile wristband, and the dial was painted with a magnificent moon phase diagram.

Innately handsome, nourished by money, dazzling, calm, and elegant. It would be difficult for any Omega to resist these charms, but they had fallen into the eyes of the uninitiated, who had just now noticed them.

He’d used his jawbone to grind into the bloody palm of this hand . . . .

Some ill-timed images burst into his mind. Ye Ci’s heart beat straight into his throat, and with his face lowered, he redirected his hand to place the paper on the corner of the table: “Thank, thank you.”

After speaking, and without waiting for Huo Tinglan to respond, he slipped away faster than a wildcat.

Ye Ci returned to the room, and in order to shake off those blush-inducing, ear-warming images that were playing repeatedly in his mind, he went to the terrace to smoke half a pack of cigarettes.

Maybe it was from smoking too much or from crouching for a long time, but his legs trembled when he got up, soft and heavy like dragging two lumps of mud.

He washed hastily, and with the chaotic mind of a teenager, slumped onto the pillow, forcing himself to repeat formulas continuously to expel the unwanted thoughts. Half-dreaming and half-awake, an unbearable dry heat rose up in his body, and the sweet fragrance of vanilla drifted. Ye Ci opened his eyes in a daze, wanting to turn on the air conditioner, but was reluctant to waste the drowsiness he had cultivated with great concentration. He fell into dreamland, at a loss.

And in that dream, it was all . . . .

Huo Tinglan’s hand.

The hand he saw in the study that evening.

With sharp angles and sensual blue veins, like that night, it clasped Ye Ci’s jaw and let him use his jawbone to grind into the palm of that injured hand, and the faint, sweet scent of blood pervaded.

“Baby . . . .”

A seductive double-bass voice.

A tingling pain in his neck.

The feeling of being possessed by an Alpha.

What it was like to be an Omega . . . .

The vague dream abruptly came to an end.

“Wu . . . .”

Ye Ci woke up suddenly.

A foot spasmed across the sheet, making a long, shallow dent in the pure white cotton.

The bedroom was sweet and fragrant, and Ye Ci’s body exuded an abnormal heat, dripping with sweat. His pajamas and even the sheets were soaked through, his face was the color of a spring peach again, and his mind was a bit chaotic.

It was very similar to the experience that night.

It was just a difference of degree.

. . . . This appeared to be a mild and brief period of fever.

He had dreamed of Huo-shushu.

He still . . . .

Was he crazy?!

What was he thinking?!

Like a fish out of water, Ye Ci abruptly sat up, resting his elbows on his knees and covering his hot, embarrassed face with one hand.

He didn’t know what was normal and what was abnormal. He hadn’t had a competent father who could properly guide a boy through adolescence, and the pressure of life during his lingering youth never allowed him the curiosity to explore independently.

He was ashamed, as if he had done a bad thing.

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It may have been that his face was too hot and the heat made his eyes sore, because Ye Ci’s eyes were moist and slightly red, holding a trace of water.

He wiped his eyes fiercely and exhaled. With a cold face, he removed the sweat-stained sheets and quilt, kicked off his pajamas, and took them into the bathroom.

As long as the laundry that needed to be washed was thrown into the dirty clothes basket, the laundry room servant would come to collect it the next day. The outer garments were okay for them to deal with, but Ye Ci was too embarrassed to let others touch his underclothes. He had purchased a small jug of laundry detergent, and for shorts and the like, he washed them as soon as possible the day after changing them, and then hung them in an inconspicuous place.

Fortunately, he had been prepared.

He dug out the jug of laundry detergent and scrubbed the sheets with water.

After washing the set, he dared not take it to the terrace to dry, for fear that people would see  and ask him why he was up in the middle of the night cleaning them, so he took two chairs and set them a distance apart to stretch the larger pieces out to dry.

After washing, drying, and changing the bedding, he had worked for over an hour. In addition to the mild fever that still hadn’t gone away, Ye Ci was so tired that he nodded off while changing the quilt. He didn’t care to continue beating himself up, and fell asleep.

The next day.

Ye Ci rarely slept late in the morning.

To Ye Ci’s perception, the brief mild fever from the previous night had subsided and everything was normal.

He was marked by an Alpha in the middle of differentiation and couldn’t bear it in the end, resulting in the repercussions of hormonal disorder, and would have irregular and mild pseudo-fevers in the following days. When he was discharged from the hospital, the doctor told him to keep a few more barrier patches with him, try not to go other places besides home and school until his hormones were stable, and pay attention to his personal safety . . . . As for the treatment of this fever, the first thing was to be patient since the intensity was mild and was not dangerous to his health. It was enough to isolate the pheromones so that they wouldn’t affect others. The second thing was to seek out the Alpha who marked him before for comfort.

Since the active ingredient in the Omega inhibitors on the market was artificial imitation Alpha pheromones, these  “inferior products” would only stimulate the Alpha pheromones remaining in Ye Ci’s body and make him more uncomfortable. So until Huo Tinglan’s temporary mark disappeared, inhibitors were ineffective for Ye Ci.

Of course Ye Ci chose to endure it.

He didn’t go to class for a whole week due to his hospitalization. On Monday the next day, he grabbed a handful of barrier patches from the drawer and stuffed them into his shoulder bag.

One layer was not enough, so he pasted on a second, and two layers weren’t enough, so he pasted on a third.

At last he was done sticking them on.

He got up late, and Huo Tinglan had already left for the company when he went downstairs for breakfast.

Ye Ci heaved a sigh of relief at not meeting him face to face.

Otherwise . . . .

Thinking of that shameless dream, Ye Ci didn’t know what expression he should use to face Huo-shushu.

They were out of control that night.

But Huo-shushu was purely affected by his susceptible period, and returned to normal immediately after it ended. He looked the same as before, still so gentle and decent.

He was the only one who couldn’t control himself, as if he had awakened some deep-rooted bad habits, some dark instinct, a mind full of crooked thoughts and images not fit to be seen.

It was still just a temporary mark for the sake of treatment. He was unexpectedly dwelling on it over and over, and his soul trembled at the thought.

If Huo-shushu saw through him . . . .

He wouldn’t need to find a hole in the ground, just directly find a beam to hang from.

There were two corrected test papers on the table.

The pen marks were handsome and sharp, and the most annotated part was English composition. He crossed out the spelling and grammar mistakes and wrote the correct ones to the side, explaining a few sentence patterns. There were more comments than actual text. After explaining, he did not forget to leave a few words of encouragement, to the effect that he had made obvious progress.

Such an ordinary thing somehow made his eyes sting.

Ye Ci re-read it several times.

The score given by Huo Tinglan was very fair, and he did not deliberately relax his standards in order to indulge him.

He calculated the points and added them together with mathematics, physics, and chemistry for an exciting score.

It was much better than the test at the beginning of school, and his ranking didn’t necessarily have to look good. After all, in a place like Tiancheng Private School, even the slacker students were good enough.

Ye Ci folded the papers and planned to show Ye Hongjun when he visited her at night – if she was not in a bad state and could chat with him for a while.

Aside from his mother, the only person in the world who made him want to share his joy was Huo Tinglan.

Ye Ci stirred the porridge with a spoon in a trance, his cheeks pink and his eyelashes fluttering.

He remembered that Huo Tinglan helped him clean up his mother’s old things and cherished the things he cherished, thought of how Huo Tinglan helped him learn in a roundabout way to maintain his fragile self-esteem, about the words “Three times a day, one tablet at a time” written by Huo Tinglan on the medicine box, about Huo Tinglan tirelessly showing him how to tie his tie over and over again. How he taught him how to eat things he wasn’t familiar with, helped him vent his anger by teaching others a lesson on his behalf, and bloodied his hands for him.

In just two months, Huo Tinglan was so good, but he hadn’t thought about it.

It was too much.

This Huo-shushu was a wealthy heir born with a golden spoon in his mouth, strong-willed but not a bully.

Like the moon in the sky, the snow on the top of the mountain.

It looked cold and distant, unattainable, but what fell into his arms was clear light and a spring breeze.

Ye Ci took a sip of porridge.

It was his favorite seafood porridge, but he couldn’t taste it.

He was thinking about his Huo-shushu. His heart clenched, his ears were burning hot, and he thought about everything that had happened the past two months, but he couldn’t understand why he was dwelling on it.

It was the first awakening of romance.

Love without knowing.

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