Chapter 12: Special Medication

Ning Yixiao was wearing a cap, but Su Hui recognized him at the first glance. The headlights shimmered in the rain, casting long, wavering beams that looked like tangled ropes, binding them together.

Ning Yixiao walked toward him through the rain, offering his habitual smile, asking with friendly concern, “Why are you here?”

Su Hui’s hair was shorter than before, tousled by the wind. His expression was languid, possessing a youthful freedom, a kind of flickering, swaying beauty.

His speech was slow: “I’m just playing. I ran out, and after walking for a while, I ended up here.”

His ramblings and disjointed thoughts were met with patience. Ning Yixiao stopped in front of Su Hui, picked up the empty water bottles on the bench one by one, and sat down beside him.

“Playing what?” Ning Yixiao asked, not looking at him.

A gust of wind struck, carrying rain. Su Hui closed his eyes and spread his arms, letting the wind inflate his shirt, then flatten it, letting the breeze touch every inch of his skin.

“I love the wind so much,” he said softly.

Ning Yixiao didn’t mind the jump in topic. “Why?”

Su Hui opened his palms, feeling the wind pass through his fingers, eyes fixed on the moving shadows of trees across the road.

“When there’s wind, it feels like this world isn’t stagnant. Like everyone is alive.”

Ning Yixiao understood him perfectly. His own hands, which had been resting, unconsciously opened, feeling the air and rain flowing between his fingers.

He looked at Su Hui. “You cut your hair?”

“Mhm.” Su Hui nodded feebly, then suddenly looked up, asking with a smile, “Does it look good?”

For some reason, seeing him smile made Ning Yixiao feel a pang of sadness; he couldn’t tell if it was empathy or if he had genuinely sensed something.

“Yes, it was also good before,” he answered.

Su Hui smiled again, more sincerely this time.

“I liked it better before, too. They made me cut it. They thought it made me look more ‘energetic.'”

As he spoke, he tried to stand, but a wave of dizziness hit him. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, head hanging limply.

Still want to throw up.

Through the soaked shirt, Ning Yixiao could see his slightly protruding shoulder blades.

“Did you drink?” Ning Yixiao bent down to check on him. “Looks like you had quite a bit.”

His gaze shifted to the bottles on the ground, thinking to himself that when this person got drunk, he must get terribly thirsty.

Su Hui wasn’t sure whether to tell the truth, so he didn’t deny it. He was still in agony, feeling even worse after leaning forward. He grabbed his knees to stand again, but nearly vomited.

Ning Yixiao immediately steadied him, his hands gripping Su Hui’s thin elbows. “Are you okay? Do you want to throw up?”

Su Hui didn’t dare shake his head. He leaned half-against Ning Yixiao’s shoulder. “I… I need to go to the restroom.”

Hot breath lingered against Ning Yixiao’s neck, making his muscles stiffen. Ning Yixiao released him so he could sit steady. He bent down to collect the water bottles one by one, tossed them into the trash, and then helped him up.

As Su Hui stood, his collar fell open, revealing a vast expanse of paper-white skin—skin that looked like it would easily bruise, yet just as easily fade away.

Ning Yixiao stopped abruptly, took off his baseball cap, and placed it on Su Hui’s head.

Su Hui was dizzy and dazed, letting out a small, cat-like hum. “Mhm?”

“Keep it on,” Ning Yixiao said, supporting him. “Getting your head wet makes you sick.”

There were no public restrooms nearby. He walked with Su Hui for quite a while. The rain wasn’t heavy, but being soaked was a problem; Su Hui’s shirt was transparent. He intended to find a restaurant, but Su Hui pointed a finger, saying there seemed to be a bar on the corner.

It wasn’t so much a bar as a club. Many people stood outside—Chinese, foreign—all wearing expressions of people with time to kill.

Thinking of his confident gesture, Ning Yixiao couldn’t help but associate these people with Su Hui, yet felt something was different.

Two men stood at the entrance, holding devices to apply temporary fluorescent tattoos to people’s hands. Their eyes swept over Ning Yixiao’s cheap short-sleeved shirt, then at the luxury watch on Su Hui’s wrist.

“Hello, tickets for men are 300. Cash, WeChat, or Alipay are all fine.”

Ning Yixiao was momentarily speechless, the request to borrow the restroom stuck in his throat.

Su Hui looked up, very straightforward but struggling with his words. “Borrow, borrow… need the restroom, sorry…”

The man at the door saw his face and immediately wore an indescribable expression. He stared at him, head to toe, then shot a sideways glance at Ning Yixiao. “Oh? Already this wasted before the show even starts? Better be careful not to get ‘picked up’ (as a drunk target), little handsome.”

Ning Yixiao’s expression changed. Su Hui’s brain seemed frozen; he was still thinking about the 300 yuan the clerk mentioned and instinctively reached for his pocket. He stopped when his wrist was grabbed. He looked up to see Ning Yixiao frowning.

“Come with me.”

Su Hui was confused, dragged along for several steps without asking where, only managing to say with effort: “I want the restroom…”

Ning Yixiao said he knew, but kept dragging his hand, bringing him onto a bus.

Su Hui didn’t remember the last time he’d been on a bus. Words like danger, mental illness, and crowded popped into his head but dissipated quickly. He realized that among the jostling passengers, Ning Yixiao had wrapped his arm around him—not quite touching him, but creating a safe, respectful barrier.

Immediately, those three words felt irrelevant to him.

In the haze, hallucinations appeared before Su Hui’s eyes. He suddenly saw the ocean on Ning Yixiao’s face—a deep, black sea—but soon, it transformed into tiny pills, shifting from black to white.

These hallucinations lasted until Ning Yixiao helped him off the bus, half-cradling him like a child, into a dilapidated old building.

There was no elevator. The ground floor of the unit looked like the entrance to a gray tomb—dark, permeated with the smell of rotting fruit and meat, mixed with damp mold. No signs of life.

Su Hui’s weak attention was drawn to small advertisements in the hallway, then dispelled by black oily soot. He stared at the grime on the walls, nearly tripping over a trash bag outside someone’s door.

He felt like he was sinking, his body tilting forward, only to be yanked back by Ning Yixiao.

Once steady, he heard the faint scratching of a key against a hole. A door opened, blending into the dark hallway, and Su Hui was led inside.

“You probably don’t need me to help you, right?” Ning Yixiao said, pulling his wrist toward a very, very small door.

He turned on the light. The space was incredibly cramped; a few toiletries sat on a yellowing, broken ceramic sink, with others on the windowsill.

Su Hui braced himself against the wall and went in. The hallucinations didn’t stop. Everything looked enormous; he felt like an intruder from Lilliput, stumbling everywhere, his knee knocking directly into the cabinet under the sink.

“Forget it.”

He heard Ning Yixiao’s voice. Then, his elbows were steadied, and he was led to the toilet. Only then did Ning Yixiao’s hands let go.

He walked away, leaving only one sentence: “I’ll wait for you outside.”

Su Hui struggled even to wash his hands, constantly misjudging the location of the faucet. When he finally came out, his foot caught on the threshold, his wet hands flailing until he collapsed into the arms of Ning Yixiao, who was standing loyally by the door, leaving wet handprints on his shirt.

Very clearly, Su Hui felt Ning Yixiao’s body stiffen slightly before pushing him away.

“Just how much did you drink?”

Ning Yixiao felt it was strange; he couldn’t smell alcohol on Su Hui, just that his limbs were soft and his hands were trembling slightly.

“Ning Yixiao, is there… any water?”

Perhaps the metabolism kicked in and the drugs were gradually being excreted. The hallucinations faded, and Su Hui’s vision cleared, allowing him to see the inside of the apartment.

It was a narrow two-bedroom, one-living room unit with no windows. The lights in the rooms were dim. The living room was long and thin, connecting to an even narrower kitchen like a sickle. Two doors stood side-by-side, the wood-veneer peeling and mottled.

“No bottled water. Is it okay if I boil some now?”

“Mhm, okay.” Su Hui nodded, instinctively grabbing Ning Yixiao’s hand. “I want to drink salt water.”

The way he looked at people was so docile, his eyes moist, making him impossible to refuse.

Ning Yixiao brought him to his room, boiled a kettle of hot water, poured it into his only cup, added some salt as requested, and brought it into the room.

He had just gotten the keys last night and moved some things over before class today. Ning Yixiao was a clean freak; he’d mopped the floor three times and wiped the furniture four times with disinfectant. The remaining time was only enough to make the bed; the rest of his luggage was piled up in this ten-square-meter room, unpacked.

Su Hui sat on the only patch of floor not covered in boxes, his head tilted against the bed frame, back to him, motionless—like an exquisite doll that didn’t belong there.

It was a basement-converted apartment with no windows; the room was sweltering. Seeing Su Hui’s hair sticking to his neck, Ning Yixiao painstakingly moved the luggage, walked to the only small table, turned on the old fan the landlord had left behind, and left the cup of water there to cool.

As the fan turned on, Su Hui seemed to come alive. He opened his eyes and stared fixedly at the squeaking, rotating fan.

“Want some?” Ning Yixiao had nowhere to stand, so he sat on his luggage trunk, handing the water over. “It’s hot, just boiled.”

“Mhm.” Su Hui reached out. “I’m not afraid of the heat.” He took the mug, cradling it in his hands, sipping slowly. But it was still too hot; after every sip, Su Hui had to lift his face to the fan to blow on his flushed skin.

It took a great deal of effort to finish. Su Hui felt as if his entire body was being steamed through. He leaned against the bed, eyes fixed on Ning Yixiao, his voice looser than usual. “Why move out? Isn’t there a dorm?”

Ning Yixiao didn’t mind the sudden question, wearing his habitual smile. “I got an internship offer from a company, and I have to stay on campus over the summer for a project and my thesis. I couldn’t get a dorm, so I had to move out.”

As he answered, he pulled a towel he hadn’t used much from his luggage and handed it to Su Hui, gesturing for him to wipe the water off his body.

“It must be a good company. Where is it? Is it far to work?” Su Hui took the towel, his smile bright, his long, heavy eyelashes fluttering vividly along with his smiling eyes.

“Far.” Ning Yixiao answered only the last question.

“Why not live closer?”

“Because this place is cheap.” Ning Yixiao answered the questions with enough patience, then turned the tables on the Young Master. “You used the restroom, you drank your water. Going home? I’ll take you.”

He expected Su Hui to cooperate, but instead, he shook his head. “I’m not going back.”

Su Hui rested his chin on his arm and took a deep breath. “Ning Yixiao, I don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

This statement didn’t sound very convincing.

Ning Yixiao’s mind suddenly conjured the voices of his roommates—all those suggestive, scandalous topics they liked to gossip about.

How could he be someone with nowhere to stay?

Su Hui suddenly turned his head, leaning in closer to Ning Yixiao, looking at him with the eyes of someone used to getting everything they wanted. He pleaded, “Can I stay here for the night?”

There were only a dozen centimeters between them. Ning Yixiao could clearly see the beads of sweat on the tip of his nose. Though his expression was indifferent, even aloof, those moist eyes revealed a kind of weak temptation.

“Just one night. Please, take me in.” Su Hui was struggling to stay kneeling. He paused, then looked up. “Really, I won’t sleep in your bed. I won’t crowd you. I’ll just lie on the floor. No… I don’t even need to sleep.”

His demeanor carried a hint of excitement, though it was subtle.

“Please help me. I don’t want to go back today no matter what…” Su Hui stopped suddenly, leaned in, reached out, and grabbed at the air in front of Ning Yixiao’s face.

Ning Yixiao froze, instinctively grabbing his hand.

“There was a bug…” Su Hui whispered.

Ning Yixiao was certain. “There are no bugs.”

Su Hui felt he hadn’t seen wrong. He leaned forward suddenly, the distance between them closing to ten centimeters.

“There was, a little fly…” He stared at Ning Yixiao’s face, blinked, and suddenly reached out to touch his right eye, then laughed. “No, no. It’s your beauty mark.”

Ning Yixiao was so flustered by him that he snatched both of his hands, gripping his wrists tightly, overlapping them like he was interrogating a criminal. “Stop moving around.”

“Alright…” Su Hui muttered a few words under his breath.

At such close proximity, when Su Hui parted his lips to speak, Ning Yixiao suddenly noticed his tongue.

There seemed to be a pink pill sitting on it.

Ning Yixiao raised an eyebrow. “Are you taking medicine?”

“Mhm?” Su Hui was first startled, tilted his head to think for a moment, then laughed. He was about to wave his hand, then realized his hands were being held, so he shook his head instead. “No.”

His eyes were bright, filled with a touch of cunning. He tilted his face up, opened his lips, and stuck out his tongue to show Ning Yixiao. The “pill” was perched on his pink tongue. The moist tip of his tongue brushed lightly against his teeth, moving slightly, then curling—revealing the base of a tongue piercing.

The corners of his mouth lifted, and Su Hui bit down on the tip of it with his teeth, just like he was lightly biting a piece of medication.

The display was so ambiguous—ambiguous enough that even though it lasted only a brief moment, it melted into slow motion in Ning Yixiao’s eyes.

The scary part was that his first reaction was: What would that feel like?

I want to stick my finger in and try.

These sudden reactions startled Ning Yixiao himself, and his reason immediately called a halt. His heart was racing, but the next second, his willpower attempted to force himself to stay calm.

The effect of the “pill” seemed to truly be taking hold, and a bitterness began to spread.

To Su Hui, this probably meant nothing. Ning Yixiao thought, perhaps he had shown this to others more than once, or perhaps he was just drunk and doing everything naturally.

It had nothing to do with who the other person was; he just happened to be the one who found out.

Su Hui smiled, retracted his tongue, and explained, “It’s a tongue piercing. I was in a bad mood today, so I put it in.”

This logic made no sense.

Ning Yixiao’s slightly drifting thoughts pulled back somewhat. He looked at him and asked a question that made no sense either: “Does it work?”

Su Hui felt genuinely intrigued by his response. This was the first time someone had managed to filter out all the answers he didn’t like and throw back this kind of feedback.

Someone as strange as him could actually find resonance with another person.

“Mhm…” Su Hui’s tone was soft, his voice the exact opposite of the content. “Originally, I just wanted to annoy someone a little. If they found out I wore this, they’d get a headache. I don’t want to be put there like a display piece for everyone to look at. I’m a person, not a toy. It’s a pity those adults only care about social standing; they hadn’t noticed yet…”

“But, you’re the first person to notice. Suddenly, I’m in a very good mood again.”

As he spoke, the “pill” on the tip of his tongue flickered in and out of sight.

A pill that would never melt.

Su Hui looked at Ning Yixiao, his smile pure. “Does that count as being particularly effective?”