“Watch your step!”

Dou Sheng struggled up to slap the room lights on. The sudden flare made Xie Lan instinctively shut his eyes; his foot hovered just millimeters off the floor, barely braking in time.

It was a good while before he slowly opened his eyes to look at the floor beneath him.

“……”

He would call this a tragedy of human proportions.

A bowl of Luosifen (snail noodles) had been spilled over practically the entire open space on this side of the bed—soup, toppings, red, yellow, green, black, and white all mixed together in a spectacle that was truly breathtaking.

“Late-night mukbang wake-up pranks” are pretty common on YouTube, usually done between couples or roommates. Xie Lan had watched quite a few before, but this was the first time he had seen one this hardcore.

The first time seeing one, and he had the honor of starring in it.

Wutong, who had been lying by the pillow, stood up. Its pink nose sniffed rapidly, and then its cat body went stiff.

Then, Xie Lan clearly saw it dry-heave (yue) once before jumping off the bed with a thump, hugging the wall to rapidly flee this terrifying room.

It wasn’t until the cat’s shadow disappeared that he snapped out of his daze.

Dou Sheng was standing right by the bed, well within kicking distance.

“Dou Sheng!!”

Xie Lan snapped out of it with rage, grabbing Dou Sheng’s collar. “Do you just really want to fight?!”

“Hey, hey!” Dou Sheng was caught off guard by the grab and yelped, “I lost my footing!”

Too late.

Xie Lan hadn’t expected Dou Sheng’s center of gravity to be entirely on one foot. With that yank, Dou Sheng lost his balance and lunged directly toward the bed. Xie Lan was smashed down by him head-on, with no power to resist. He could only watch as Dou Sheng’s face gradually blocked out the blinding overhead light, the silhouette against the light getting closer and clearer—

Thump. The two of them smashed onto the bed, face to face.

Dou Sheng managed to distance himself slightly in mid-air, but Xie Lan was still pinned under half his body. Dou Sheng’s hipbone slammed ruthlessly into his side, digging in painfully.

He seemed to be stunned by the impact and didn’t make a sound for a long time.

That person’s pajamas rubbed against his arm, very soft; by contrast, the hipbone digging into his waist seemed exceptionally hard. Not only was it painful, but it also caused an inexplicable restlessness in the bottom of his heart. Aside from the hipbone, the other intrusive things were Dou Sheng’s leg slanted between his own legs, and their feet touching in a way that was almost intimate.

A certain unbreakable distance had been shattered again, caught off guard. They were too close; he could even hear Dou Sheng’s breathing right by his ear and smell the minty scent of shampoo coming from Dou Sheng’s hair.

After a long moment, Dou Sheng finally pushed against the mattress with his hand. With his leg slanted and pressing down on Xie Lan’s, knees slightly bent, he leveraged his body up.

After getting up, Dou Sheng limped a step to the side, coughed, and whispered, “Sorry about that, I just twisted my ankle and lost my footing.”

There was an awkward silence in the room.

It took a while for Xie Lan’s brain to resume working.

“Twisted your ankle?” He sat up and looked at Dou Sheng’s ankle. “Are you okay?”

Dou Sheng shook his head. “My foot is fine. Is your arm okay?”

“Arm?” Xie Lan instinctively looked at his “heavily injured” arm.

The room was quiet for a moment, and then Dou Sheng’s lips curved up slightly. Catching sight of his expression, the corner of Xie Lan’s mouth twitched as well.

Dou Sheng laughed first, and Xie Lan sighed helplessly, chuckling along with him a couple of times.

“You are absolutely sick. Go to the hospital immediately and have the doctor wrap up your brain.” Xie Lan gritted his teeth. “Also, just you wait. Be careful when you sleep these next couple of days.”

Dou Sheng sighed, “I didn’t expect to scare you this badly either. Don’t move yet, let me clean up the floor.”

Saying that, he limped out of the room. Once he was gone, the smile on Xie Lan’s face suddenly vanished. He sat on the bed, staring into space.

A thin black tank top clung to his skin. The spot where Dou Sheng’s hipbone had dug in still held a trace of a strange sensation—a little numb, and a little hot. While Dou Sheng was gone, he quickly lifted his shirt to check his waist.

—No redness, no bruising, no abnormalities at all. He didn’t know where that strange sense of presence was coming from.

Dou Sheng returned very quickly, holding a mop in his left hand and a bucket in his right. He had taken off his pajamas, leaving only a black tank top identical to Xie Lan’s. He limped over, set the bucket down with a clatter, used a plastic bag over his hand to grab the solid waste, and then bent down to start mopping.

Dou Sheng was usually a rich young master, but when it came to work, he didn’t drag his feet. The tank top hugged his frame; his right shoulder blade was right before Xie Lan’s eyes, the muscle lines of his shoulders and arms rising and falling with the push and pull of the mop.

The impact when they fell just now seemed to have smashed some strange associative ability into Xie Lan. It was as if he suddenly had an acute awareness of Dou Sheng’s entire skeletal structure, or perhaps curiosity. His eyes involuntarily drifted toward Dou Sheng’s hips, then his thighs, then up to his waist, shoulders, and collarbone…

Xie Lan suddenly realized the area around Dou Sheng’s collarbone was flushed a faint red. Further up, his neck and earlobes were also a bit red. “Are you hot?” he asked abruptly.

Actually, it was he himself who felt very hot.

Maybe summer was really coming. Even though it was the middle of the night, it felt hot.

Dou Sheng’s movements paused.

A moment later, he continued mopping, rinsing the dirty mop in the bucket, acting calm as he said, “Not hot. You’re hot?”

Xie Lan didn’t speak again. His gaze fell on the foot Dou Sheng was clearly avoiding putting weight on. “Leave it, let me do it.”

“No need.” Dou Sheng shook his head immediately, making a motion to push him back down, but his hand hesitated before touching Xie Lan’s shoulder. A moment later, he pulled back, whispering, “A twist is no big deal. Your arm is precious, just forget it.”

Xie Lan could only stay on the bed, watching him mop half the floor, then carry the bucket out to change the water.

The sound of splashing water from the adjacent bathroom seemed to pull him slightly out of that strange awkwardness.

Xie Lan’s head was a bit fuzzy. He subconsciously unlocked his phone.

The first video recommended on the top left of the Bilibili homepage was from Gongzi Yeshen (Young Master Night God), tagged with the event submission. The title was “I Painstakingly Made a Meal, Only to Be Brutally Beaten.” This kind of title was full of gimmickry, and the video stats were good; it had only been out for four hours, and the views were already approaching 200,000. It was one of Yeshen’s best-performing videos recently.

The water sound next door stopped. Xie Lan stuffed his phone back under the pillow.

He felt a bit restless, not because of Gongzi Yeshen’s video, but because of an indescribable feeling.

Maybe it was still because of his waist getting hit—even now, he felt uncomfortable in the spot where Dou Sheng’s hipbone had pressed. He couldn’t say if it was pain or an itch, but something was just off.

Dou Sheng came back carrying the supplies, put down the bucket, and said while mopping, “By the way, have you watched these prank videos before?”

“Yeah.” Xie Lan looked at him gloomily. “But I’ve never acted in one.”

Dou Sheng laughed a couple of times. “These videos are actually hard to make. People’s natural reactions are hard to control. Like just now, you woke up earlier than I expected, and your reaction was more intense. You instantly spiked the atmosphere and then it ended. Although the comedic effect was good, it can’t support a full video.”

Xie Lan was distracted and didn’t really hear what he was saying, just staring at his profile in a trance.

Dou Sheng used the mop like a cane to support himself on the floor and continued, “Why don’t we just film one with a script? You wake up halfway through my eating and act according to the script. It doesn’t matter if it looks fake. Once the main feature is done, we can put the real reaction from just now at the end and tell everyone directly that the beginning was a script and the end was reality. What do you think?”

Xie Lan was a bit dazed listening to him. “You still want to use the footage from just now?”

Right now, as long as he thought about that footage, he could immediately recall the way they fell together, and even recall the feeling of being pinned under half of Dou Sheng’s body.

The footage itself was nothing, but the association made it hard to breathe.

Dou Sheng was a little surprised. “You don’t want to keep it? Or do you mind your sleeping posture being on camera?”

Xie Lan hesitated for a while. “Anyway, I feel… it’s a bit weird. Think of another way.”

“That works too.” Dou Sheng sighed with some regret, then smiled. “Then I’ll keep it for myself to watch. I’ll edit it nicely later and send it to you.”

Xie Lan: “…No need to be so polite.”

Dou Sheng chuckled while mopping. He reached the window and casually opened it.

The weather tonight was very calm, even a bit muggy. There wasn’t a breath of wind, so it didn’t do much to air out the room.

Dou Sheng glanced out the window and clicked his tongue. “The smell in this room is too intense. Come sleep in my room tonight.”

Huh?

Xie Lan’s scalp started tingling with automatic electricity again, and he subconsciously refused rapidly, “No need, no need, I’ll just stay in my own room. I don’t think it stinks.”

Perhaps his refusal was too urgent; the room suddenly became a bit quiet, breeding a hint of subtle awkwardness.

Dou Sheng paused for a while before whispering, “Alright then,” and lowered his head to continue mopping.

Xie Lan looked back at him and realized that he was stepping firmly on the twisted foot. He quickly finished one round, carried the bucket back to his room to change the water, and came back to mop it all over again until there wasn’t a single stain on the floor. It even shone with a layer of water, reflecting his tall, thin silhouette.

Dou Sheng picked up the bucket. “Then I’ll shoot this video a different way. You have a good sleep.”

He went back to his room, grabbed a new bag of Luo Dawang noodles, and took another camera downstairs.

Xie Lan was stunned. “You have to film tonight? What are you going to film?”

“Mukbang.” Dou Sheng turned back and smiled. “Silent mukbang, with a little bit of a scenario. Don’t mention it, I just thought of this topic just now. It’ll be called ‘Late Night Floor-Mopping Labor Camp Boy Silently Slurps Noodles’. A lot of mukbang viewers like watching this kind where you don’t talk and just keep your head down eating like crazy. Maybe I can attract a wave of new fans. I’ll record quietly, you just sleep.”

For some reason, even though Dou Sheng was smiling, Xie Lan felt his mood was subtly low. Because he was talking more—specifically, explaining more. Dou Sheng usually spoke in short sentences; unless he was roasting someone or having a heart-to-heart, he rarely deliberately said so much at once.

But he couldn’t quite pinpoint where Dou Sheng’s mood was down.

“Oh right.” Dou Sheng seemed to remember something else. “You still need to air out your room. If you aren’t willing to come to my room to sleep, you can find another guest room. The other two guest rooms in the house are clean.”

Xie Lan paused, and only after a long time did he let out an “Oh.”

He heard it. That phrase “aren’t willing to come to my room to sleep” was spoken in a slightly lower tone than the other words.

Dou Sheng looked down to fiddle with the tripod, asking seemingly casually, “I’m going to cook another pack, do you want to eat? Try some. Luosifen really is a purely Guangxi intangible cultural heritage.”

“I won’t try it,” Xie Lan said subconsciously. “I’ll just watch you record the video.”

Dou Sheng smiled. “Okay. Anyway, I’ll leave a little for you.”

The sound of boiling water soon rang out from the kitchen. Xie Lan watched him skillfully set up the camera tripod by the pot, changing angles to film the water gradually boiling. When it boiled, he put in the noodles, shook them loose, gave a close-up, and after three minutes of handheld filming, turned off the heat to drain the noodles. He started another pot of water, threw in the seasoning, and boiled the noodles a second time.

Dou Sheng’s noodle-cooking routine was very practiced. When he turned to throw away the trash at the end, Xie Lan noticed there was one seasoning packet he hadn’t put in; he had thrown it directly into the trash can.

The pot boiled quickly, steam filling the air. Dou Sheng brought the Luosifen to the table, elevated it with a box, and set up the camera. The camera position was very close. He didn’t speak to the lens, didn’t even look at it once, just focused on eating the noodles.

The noodles fresh out of the pot should have been scalding, but Dou Sheng didn’t mind at all. The microphone was clipped to the collar of his tank top. He lifted the bowl, slurping the soup loudly, and sucked down the noodles with crisp, efficient movements. Boys at this age were the most decisive when eating, and it was very influential; just watching made one feel hungry.

Xie Lan subconsciously sniffed. This time, the cooked noodles didn’t seem to smell bad at all, only savory. In the middle of the night, it was actually somewhat tempting.

He stood at the door, openly watching Dou Sheng eat noodles, watching his fingers gripping the far end of the chopsticks as he lifted the noodles, his wrist bone moving slightly. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple slid gently on his pale neck.

After about three to five minutes, Dou Sheng let out a long breath, got up, took a can of ice cola from the fridge, and limped back to the front of the camera. He popped the tab with one hand, psshht, letting the carbon dioxide surge out, and tilted his head back to guzzle it down.

A can of cola was gone in ten seconds, and then Dou Sheng casually crushed the can, letting out a comfortable burp.

He lifted his chin at the camera. The moment the cola can hit the table, his other hand cleanly pressed the stop button.

One video: no talking, casual camerawork, but full of atmosphere and youthful spirit.

“That’s it, wrap it up.” Dou Sheng snapped his fingers and stood up to put the bowl and chopsticks in the dishwasher. “Are you sleeping?”

“Sleeping,” Xie Lan came back to his senses, paused, and added, “I’ll sit here for a bit, wait for the smell in the room to dissipate. You sleep first.”

Hearing this, Dou Sheng seemed to want to persuade him, but after stopping and starting a few times, he ultimately just said, “Then go up early.”

“En.”

Dou Sheng left. The kitchen was quiet. Xie Lan suddenly felt a little lonely.

He subconsciously looked up at the ceiling, walked to the pot, and served himself the half-bowl of noodles Dou Sheng had left him. He took out his phone and, while eating, reluctantly clicked on Gongzi Yeshen’s video.

The taste of the Luosifen was different from what he imagined. What Dou Sheng had thrown away must have been the “stinky packet” (bamboo shoots). Now, without that odor, the Luosifen itself was actually quite delicious. The soup was fresh, and the noodles were chewy, more special than the rice noodles outside the West Gate.

As he ate, he dragged the progress bar of Yeshen’s video backward, found the key shots, watched a bit, and dragged it back again.

To be fair, the comedic effect of Yeshen’s video was indeed done well. He spent a lot of money at an import supermarket buying ingredients like raw ham and black truffles, used weird seasonings, and made a table of “dark cuisine” for his parents to eat. The creativity was ordinary, but his ability to mobilize audience emotion was powerful. Just regarding the half-minute of being beaten up at the end, it achieved pure comedy. It was pretty funny.

Xie Lan finished picking through the video, then sighed deeply at the empty bowl and phone in front of him.

If this was the case, Dou Sheng’s pure mukbang video would likely be overshadowed.

That wouldn’t do.

---

3:00 AM. The whole house had fallen silent.

There was no sound upstairs or down. The gaps under the doors of the two bedrooms on the second floor were pitch black.

But Xie Lan hadn’t slept. He sat at his desk with the lamp on. On the desk sat the camera Dou Sheng had left in his room, connected to an iPad.

The iPad was also Dou Sheng’s; it had been in his schoolbag during the day, so it was handy to use now.

The tablet’s built-in editing software was very average, and operating without a mouse was troublesome, but fortunately, the footage was only a minute and a half long. Even a refined edit wouldn’t take much work.

Xie Lan worked very diligently. Dou Sheng’s mukbang just now had a kind of scenic beauty—finding movement in stillness—and a silence detached from life. Therefore, as a “blooper” at the end, this video naturally needed the biggest contrast possible, the most hilarious atmosphere possible. Only such extreme emotional highs and lows could maximize the comedic effect, making the purely funny neighbor look like nothing in comparison.

Xie Lan’s fingers moved rapidly across the screen, as nimble as if playing the violin. He selected lively, funny background music and mixed in a few sound effects like bells to cue his two toss-and-turns. And for the moment he finally woke up and exploded into action, he added “big head” effects to himself and Dou Sheng, drew a white outline around the flying Luosifen, and added radial emphasis lines. Following the noodles falling inch by inch, he re-timed the video rhythm, finally turning it into a two-minute bonus clip.

When everything was done, it was almost four o’clock.

Xie Lan stretched and decided to go into the bathroom to take a shower.

Hot water sprinkled over his body. Standing under the showerhead, he spaced out again.

Actually, he didn’t know what was wrong with himself. He absolutely did not dislike Dou Sheng’s proximity. It was just that in certain individual moments, he would instinctively want to run, unable to control it. Maybe this was the relationship between the Second Cat and the Big Cat that Dou Sheng spoke of—the Second Cat has just arrived in the Big Cat’s territory and is willing to accept the Big Cat’s grooming, but when the Big Cat approaches, there is still a split second of trembling.

And the posture when they fell just now was indeed a bit… peculiar.

It was a peculiarity he didn’t want to recall.

Xie Lan blew his hair dry, came out of the bathroom, and picked up the iPad.

He thought for a moment, then grabbed his own pillow as well.

His intentions were clear.

4:30 AM.

Xie Lan stood at Dou Sheng’s door, looking at the “Business Closed for Today” sign. He hesitated, then asked tentatively in a very low voice, “Asleep?”

A reply sounded from the room almost instantly. “No. What’s up?”

His voice sounded abnormally awake, even more awake than when he came to his room to secretly record earlier. It sounded like he hadn’t slept at all.

Xie Lan was stunned for a moment. Inside, Dou Sheng asked again, “Finished the noodles? Not enough?”

Hah?

Xie Lan was a bit confused and returned to a normal volume. “I’m not eating noodles. God… you haven’t slept? Then I’m coming in?”

There was no response from the room. Just as Xie Lan was about to push the door open, the sound of Dou Sheng getting out of bed came from inside. A few seconds later, the door opened, and Dou Sheng appeared in the doorway along with the moonlight behind him.

The surroundings were dim, making those dark eyes look somewhat silent and lost. But when his gaze fell on the pillow Xie Lan was holding, those eyes seemed to pause, then glimmer with a spark of light.

Dou Sheng asked in a low voice, “What’s wrong?”

“I have insomnia. The room stinks so bad I can’t sleep, so I decided to come over and squeeze in with you.” Xie Lan mumbled, bumping past him to squeeze through the doorway.

Dou Sheng seemed to freeze in the doorway. It took a long while before he slowly closed the door.

“Didn’t you say you weren’t coming over to sleep?” He asked the question, but the tone at the end curled upward.

Xie Lan ignored him and threw the pillow directly onto the bed. Thump.

He scooted with his pillow to the side of the bed near the window, patted the spot beside him, and said, “I think the footage from earlier is actually usable. I edited it. You can put it at the end of the mukbang. Viewers like content where the mood shifts.”

“Edited it?” Dou Sheng’s expression was a bit blank. “Didn’t you say you didn’t want to use it?”

“I reconsidered and thought it works.” Xie Lan tossed the iPad onto Dou Sheng’s pillow. “Check it out.”

Saying that, he pulled the quilt over himself, lay down, and yawned. “No need to thank me too much.”

Dou Sheng didn’t speak for a long time. He lowered his head and watched the footage twice.

“How is it?” Xie Lan asked.

Dou Sheng hummed. “Really good. Very professional. The kind you can just splice on and use directly.”

Xie Lan couldn’t help but curl his lips upon hearing this. He asked softly, “Then, are you sleepy?”

“Not sleepy anymore.” Dou Sheng sighed. “Good lord, I thought this whole mess tonight would take thirty minutes max to wrap up. I didn’t expect it to cause so much trouble, dragging you into tossing and turning all night.”

Xie Lan paused, then suggested in a whisper, “Then, if you aren’t sleepy, why don’t you stay out of bed and edit the video now?”

Dou Sheng: “?”

Xie Lan hesitated a moment and said, “Submission requires snatching time… basic professional requirement.”

Dou Sheng held the tablet, stunned for a good while, before grasping the keyword. “Snatching time? Someone else posted a video first?”

As he spoke, he opened Bilibili. The recommendation on the top left was still Yeshen’s video. Dou Sheng raised an eyebrow and casually clicked on it.

He didn’t turn on the sound. On the screen, there was only Gongzi Yeshen performing a pantomime. Dou Sheng looked calm; he watched a few seconds, dragged the progress bar, watched a few seconds, dragged it again. He focused on almost exactly the same nodes Xie Lan had, and finished skimming the video in no time.

Xie Lan said, “That one is definitely funny, but from start to finish, the emotion is the same. I think as long as you…”

Dou Sheng suddenly smiled. “It’s fine.”

Xie Lan paused. “What’s fine?”

“So that’s it. I was wondering.” Dou Sheng tossed the tablet aside, his eyes overflowing with a faint smile. “For this submission, just posting the mukbang I just recorded is enough. There’s no need to force footage you didn’t want to include just to compete. Although Yeshen and I have always been fighting for the top spot in the variety category, I don’t need to bite him to death on every single video. Besides, I already won.”

Saying this, he fell back onto the bed, pressed his hand down on Xie Lan’s hair, and whispered, “From a long time ago, I had already won.”

---

Author’s Note:

Late at night, Lazy Egg came in from outside, charging straight for the keyboard-typer’s pillow.

It flopped down with a poof: I want to sleep with you tonight!

The keyboard-typer was bleary-eyed: Why?

Lazy Egg said: Dou Egg is hateful, making weird-smelling things.

Mmh… The keyboard-typer covered it with a corner of the pillow towel: Then goodnight.

After a while, the keyboard-typer was about to fall asleep again but heard a rolling sound.

Opening eyes, saw Lazy Egg walking out angrily.

Keyboard-typer: What’s wrong now??

Forget it, forget it, it’s just weirdly unaccustomed! Lazy Egg left an angry back view.

An egg still has to make do with an egg.