Chapter 24
Shoutout to nyanmaru for the commission!
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Ye Mu kept walking forward, without hesitation, without looking back.
After passing another corner, out of sight of that coffee shop, he lowered his eyes and slowly came to a stop.
His bangs covered his forehead, making it impossible to see his expression. He hadn’t deleted Gu Huai’s WeChat account from last time.
For nearly a month, he checked the Moments updates almost every day. He knew they went to the Maldives for a trip, knew where they went swimming and where they ate, and knew all the little details about them being together recently.
He hated looking at those photos, but he still forced himself to persistently look at them every day. He wanted himself to know how happy and perfect Yan Chen’s life was after leaving him and being with Gu Huai, and he wanted to realize how insignificant his efforts over the years had been.
He wouldn’t allow himself to repeat the same mistakes and wouldn’t allow himself to retain those excess emotions. But just now, even though he had disguised himself outwardly to be so contemptuous and indifferent, fooling Yan Chen and everyone else, he still couldn’t deceive himself.
He still loved this man. Yan Chen still liked to furrow his brows like before. This habit had given him faint wrinkles but also added more charm of a mature man.
During this meeting, it seemed that his smoking addiction seemed to have worsened, and his body had become a bit thinner. All the changes in him, including the slightly yellowed fingertips from smoking more than before, Ye Mu could see with just a few glances.
Just like before, there was still a place for Yan Chen in his heart. Although it wasn’t as important anymore, it was still far from being completely eroded away.
D*mn it!
D*mn it to h*ll!
When would he be able to completely forget this person?!
Ye Mu raised his hand and slapped himself hard twice, biting his lips fiercely, almost breaking the skin.
The phone in his pocket was ringing again, urging him to return to the company as soon as possible, but he kept his head down, ignoring it.
Not long after, a broad male shadow appeared above him. Ye Mu was slightly stunned. He raised his eyes and found that Yan Chen had walked in front of him at some point and was looking at him intently from an extremely close distance.
“I didn’t know you had the habit of self-harm?” The man’s voice was low, with a hint of teasing, but also a sense of the passing years.
As he spoke, he raised his hand to caress Ye Mu’s cheek, gently rubbing it.
Ye Mu frowned and slapped his hand away with a “smack,” turning to the side to leave.
Yan Chen took a step forward, narrowing the space between them, enclosing him in his arms.
Ye Mu was annoyed and growled in a low voice, “F*ck off!”
Yan Chen narrowed his eyes slightly, his slender, fair fingers gripping Ye Mu’s chin as he lowered his head and kissed him.
This kiss was very short and shallow, yet very delicate, without a hint of lust or passion, something the two of them had never experienced before.
Ye Mu’s mind went blank for a brief moment.
By the time he reacted and wanted to resist, the other party had already stepped back and released him.
Yan Chen stood in front of him, lowering his extremely handsome eyes, and said softly, “Have you been thinking of me lately?”
Ye Mu looked at him coldly, his delicate face carved as if from thin ice.
After a long silence, he spat out a sentence at him, “Lunatic!”
Yan Chen’s deep eyes held a trace of seriousness. “Answer me.”
Ye Mu turned a deaf ear, sidestepping around him and leaving with a blank expression.
The alley was very quiet. His footsteps gradually faded away until they disappeared.
Yan Chen didn’t chase after him. He lowered his head, his back to the light, leaning against the wall, his dark eyes filled with complexity.
After standing in place for a few minutes in this posture, he took out a cigarette pack from his pocket and lit one up to smoke.
The wisps of white smoke and rings blurred his chiseled features, and his narrow eyes were half-closed from the smoke.
The tobacco burned quickly, disappearing in no time.
Yan Chen snuffed out the cigarette butt and took out another one from the pack, lighting it and taking a strong drag. The pungent smoke swirled around in his lungs several times, seeming to sting a bit, but he held it in for a long time without exhaling.
In his third year of university, Ye Mu had become addicted to smoking.
He had advised him to quit, saying that smoking was a form of harm, but the other person would smoke even more fiercely each time, reveling in it.
Many years later, he never thought that there would come a day when he himself would be so addicted to cigarettes…
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